Songster, not as sinister as they say,
she's no monster, just admittedly
a bit lost in her way.
she caves as I'm walking
down the hall.

I pick her up, off of that flooring,
the rubbery kind, whatever it is,
I guess it's rubber, but the kind that
squeaks when you walk on it after
coming in from the rain; to hell with poetry.

And so anyways I pick her up
and sit her on this bench next to me
and give her about five minutes to come to
terms with breathing and pick shimmering
auburn hair out of the tears smeared across her face,
two, mesmerizing, perfectly blue wells
the source of the streams.
And then I ask her what that
was all about and she blurts out that she

belongs in the Fine Arts Department,
and her car broke down months ago
but her father
doesn't give a **** about it,
because she can't lay up the basketball
or steal the base and so he honorably
lump summed her entire tuition
and sent her to another state
and how ****** she would be
if she had to get a job for the first
time at the age of twenty three
so she wouldn't have to be
dependent on her family and
that she was sick of wondering why
not a single guy had ever given her
a ******* flower
and that if she ever did end up liking one
two weeks later she would find out that he
was exactly the same as the others and

she had a broken look in her eyes

when she said she wondered why we were
all here in the first place, and how we were
made this way, and if people were actually
ever meant to fit together or not;

what if there was nothing as certain
as two halves making a whole?

She wanted to know how everyone's
mind had a different game to play,
she wanted to know why Jupiter
had to be so far away and everything in
between.

We had strolled off of the school grounds by
this time but I still looked twice before pulling out my flask.
I  unscrewed the cap, handed it to her and said

follow me to Deadbeat Hollow,
where we've already thrown
our problems out of the window

and she said

*lets go.

Susie gazed out at the atlantic. Great waves crashed against the cliffs . A gust of wind caught the girl almost knocking her off her feet. She seemed not to notice, her eyes remained fixed on the wild sea. Unbidden the words came to her
“Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
    Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
     The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
     Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
                      Death lies dead.”
Susie’s salty tears mingled with the sea water which the ever increasing wind blew into her eyes.
“I’m not crying, it’s the sea water making my eyes sting” So what if I am crying? All this will pass and go. Long after I am dead this will remain, the uncaring ocean buffeting the cliffs as it has for millennia. Eventually the cliffs and the surrounding habitations will be claimed by the sea. Out of the sea life came and to the ocean humanity will return.
But I’m 20, I don’t want to die”.
All flesh is dust a mocking voice intoned. Susie whirled around. There was no one save for the gulls which wheeled and screeched overhead.
“Yes I will die but please god not yet. I have my whole life to look forward to” Susie said burying her face in her hands.  
“Stupid girl” the voice, like some  insidious demon crept into her brain.
“Shut up, shut up” the girl wept sticking her fingers into her ears attempting to silence the tormentor.
“Stupid slapper. Silly *****” the voice said undaunted by Susie’s attempts to silence it.
Doing her best to ignore whatever devil was taunting her Susie reached into her coat pocket. She felt the plain brown official envelope.
“I can’t, I won’t open it. I’ll throw it away. Better not to know”.
“Ignorance is bliss, little miss a coward is” the voice sneered.
“*******, *******” Susie screamed. Her words where lost in the howling of the wind and the crashing of the waves. Susie became aware of the crumpled envelope in her hands. In her agitation she had ******* it into a ball. How easy it would be to rid herself of the thing. One flick of her wrist and the letter would be lost forever in the depths of the Atlantic.
“Coward, coward” the voice taunted.
With a supreme effort Susie unscrewed the envelope and with trembling hands opened it. Reluctantly the girl extracted a crumpled letter.
“I can’t read it, I can’t” Susie wept. “Why did I do it? God let it be good news. Please, oh Christ I can’t bare it”.

Susie’s mind went back 4 months. She was drunk. She had never been so drunk in her entire life. The thump, thump of the music transported the girl into a world where only she and the beat, beat of the bass existed. She danced wildly letting herself be taken by the music to another realm.
Susie didn’t remember him arriving. One moment she was dancing alone, the next Susie was spinning around in the arms of a total stranger. Later that evening Susie recalled having *** in a cubicle in the gents toilets. Susie thought that she had consented but she had been so drunk she wasn’t sure.
“Christ, no ******. How could I have been so ****** stupid. I went to a good school, got all the right exams and I’m now at uni. I should have known better”.
Susie had gon to the hospital on the following day and had been tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
“You have ****** but that can easily be dealt with by antibiotics” the nurse had said.
Susie breathed a sigh of relief.
“You will, however need to come back in 3 months time for a *** test”.
“Can’t I have that today?”
“The *** virus can take upto 3 months to manifest itself so any test conducted today would be extremely unlikely to show whether you are, or are not carrying the virus”.
Susie had thrown herself into her studies for the next 3 months. When not studying she partied hard. Alcohol helped her to forget for some of the time but, in the early hours of the morning she would wake up sweating.
“What if I am infected? Christ only knows how many other girls that bloke slept with before we had ***”.
Eventually the 3 months passed and Susie returned to the hospital for her *** test.
“You can call in for your results in a few days time or, if you prefer just telephone the number on your card quoting your clinic number” the nurse said handing Susie a small slip of paper.
Susie had meant to call. She really had. However there always seemed to be something preventing her from making that call. There had been her friend’s wedding, her mum’s birthday and so, so many other things.
“Don’t make excuses. Of course you could have found a few minutes to make such an important telephone call” the insidious voice whispered in her ear.
“Yes, OK, I could. now ******* back to whatever rock you crawled out from under” Susie shouted.
Slowly Susie raised the paper to her face.
“Dear Miss Armstrong,
I refer to your visit of 4 July and the test conducted on that date. We have, unsuccessfully attempted to contact you on several occasions. Having been unable to do so I am writing to inform you of the result of your test for ***. I am pleased to advise that the test is negative (I.E. you are not *** positive).
Should you have any queries regarding this letter please call the number above and quote your clinic number to the health adviser.

Yours Sincerely “.
Susie wondered idly why doctors signatures almost always resembled squashed spiders. For the first time in many hours she smiled.
“Thank you god. Thank you”.
The gulls screeched overhead, the icey wind buffeted the girl and the great waves continued to crash against the crumbling cliffs. Susie no longer cared. She embraced the storm for it represented nature of which she was an integral part. It felt good to be alive. Susie took deep breaths.  The touch of the wind on her face  was wonderful. She smiled as her long black hair blew wildly in the sea breeze.  
“If you exist god, thank you, thank you” Susie said.

While they noticed the stretch of kohl in her eyes,
I could see a pacific of emotions trapped.
While they admired her blushing cheeks,
I could read the paleness she painted red.
While they were going gaga over her smirk,
I could fathom the depth of pain that debarred a hearty gale.
While they were lured by the cascade of her hair when she unscrewed the bun,
I could feel the onus of the tantrums she wanted to turf out.
While they were hypnotized by her mesmeric curves,
I was stunned by the withstanding efficacy of such a fragile body.
While they adored her attire and scarves,
I could trace the bruises she carried with poise.
While they were hung up by the glory of her face,
I could do no help but ride out at the scars she concealed with sprightliness which was the most beautiful thing my eyes could ever have a view of and it left me dazed...
And my mouth wide opened.
-Aparajita Tripathi

The amount of days I've been given have been kind, but each day rather cruel
Trying to lift the thumb off my back of the looming stresses that rule
It could be me again and this is not the end, if fact it probably is
So before I unleash my problems, swear to mind your business

I would be lying if I said I wanted this day to last a forever
Because I found myself one forever short once we weren't together
I've said my piece so many times the puzzle is almost complete
So I've decided it's time to get off my knees and back onto my feet

I've fallen so much I keep Flintstones band-aids close at hand
My heart sewn to my sleeve for only you, which I've yet to understand
You unscrewed the machine that was me and left the parts on the floor
And I'm pretty sure I won't work just right anymore

Fading is the dynasty of what we labeled our so-called "love"
Like sticking my foot inside my sock at night to find it's a glove
The discombobulation is so overwhelming, I think the ocean is jealous
Could I start swimming now or is that being too over-zealous

Life is hard and the people crammed in it tend to make it worse
At times I tell myself it to cry, look to the sky, and curse
But there's a tune in my mind that won't seem to shut up from that one song
Telling me life is a ride, kid: grieve, learn, burn, and move on

He was the epitome of a loveless boy, and he knew it. In fact, that was what kept him restlessly awake most nights, especially on this particular evening. He glanced down at the dark mess of hair that was laid across his chest and listened to the soft emission of peaceful breathing slipping from the lips of the girl whose name he did not remember. For a second, he debated on searching the dark corners of his mind in an attempt to remember it, but he soon realized he never even bothered to ask. This disappointed him for one reason - it was another question mark that he had to add to the list of names that he kept pinned to the front of his brain. At the thought of this particular list, he felt sick, as though an ounce of regret had seeped into his stomach and spread like an infection and now threatened to rise like bile. He knew he needed to keep it down, so he leaned over his bed and wrapped his fingers around the neck of the glass bottle he kept hidden in the bed springs. He sat back up and slowly unscrewed the cap, his eyes mesmerized by the amber liquid that swirled around the bottom half like a whirlpool of gold. He brought the top to his lips and tipped it back, filling his mouth with the warmth of forgetfulness and feeling as it burned his throat like fire the entire way down. It instantly washed him clean of every bad memory he had done his best to forget for the past week. Every tear that every girl had shed on their knees in front of him, begging him to love them; every cigarette that he had chain-smoked on the rooftop of his apartment building in an effort to cloud these very memories (unsuccessfully); every streetlamp that he had found solace in as he walked the streets mindlessly at three am, searching for answers that never came to him. He closed his eyes and imagined the whiskey rising inside of him until it leaked into his lungs and filled them, drowning him. He held his breath, pondering how long it would take for him to go lifeless in this position. But the sudden stop in the rise and fall of his chest caused the female lying on it to stir in her sleep, draping her arm around him and pulling him even closer. He felt sick again so he took another sip. He knew that when he looked back on this evening, he wouldn't remember it, which was becoming a classic move on his part. In fact, his life had become nothing more than disconnected nights with nameless and faceless females and fire whiskey that filled all the empty space within him. And he wasn't sure how that had come to be, but he no longer cared enough to even attempt to figure it out.

What if smells a lot like vanilla
But not like scented candle vanilla
And not like perfume vanilla
But like liquid air freshener vanilla that you’ve had in your drawer for two years and didn’t have enough left in the bottle to use the spray top so you unscrewed the lid and splashed it all over your sheets
Let it dry
Waited two days
Then invited a pretty girl over
Let her sleep in your bed
Had ***
Dreamt of forever
Took a shower
Laid back in your bed
Let her go
And then slept face down on the pillow you let her use while reading text messages about how she won’t be able to keep seeing you any more
You know, that kind of vanilla

When I was young, I caught a moonbeam
in a jar.
And I caught the summer breeze, too,
and the smell of wildflowers,
and just the way the mourning dove sang
outside my window.

And the moonbeam glanced through the glass
in a thousand rays,
and the breeze swirled around
for a hundred days
and the dove’s notes trilled and echoed back
into themselves.

And I put them in a little drawer
and turned the key –
to keep them safe, you see.
But I kept them there for overlong,
the lids were tight, ******* on too strong,
and dust had settled over the tops.

And when again I pulled them out,
the moonbeam flickered, small and sick,
and not so quick, the summer breeze.
The flowers were a vague perfume of
summer, and the birdsong was a whisper,
nothing more.

Most carefully I unscrewed all the jars,
and shook the remnants out the window like
dead things.
But the new wind caught them and
carried them away on its wings,
ferried off to the grave of the uncatchable things.

Born…
   with flesh that contradicts nervous system
        that contradicts skeletal system
                                                          ­             I am body
torn by its very nature
                                                          ­             I am lost
with troubled soul
   swirling in the cesspool that is life
        only hope of firm ground
                                                          ­             I am teen
with limited past                                                             ­                                          yet promising future
the result of an overbearing mother
   and a negligent father
                                                          ­             I am young black man
who has acted as a dumping ground
for words of wisdom
   and honorable ethics
                                                          ­             I am tamed chameleon
                                                       ­                I am weary traveler
yet to begin his journey
   nothing more than a loner searching for a rock
                                                            ­           I am questioning dreamer
a blind eye
   trapped on the inside looking out
                                                             ­          I am double-edged book
bound at the hems
   by veins interwoven into a heart of passionless calm
                                                            ­           I am heart
that beats once a year
   and on occasion of a pulse through my ear
                                                             ­          I am sound wave
waiting for my group
   a team of gears
        interlocking and shifting
             interlocking and shifting
                                                        ­                                                                 ­                      in constant pattern
too scared to slip outside the mold
                                                            ­           I am puppeteer’s puppet
my strings stay taut even in moments of rebellion
                                                       ­                I am slave to those who lead
because I
   am
innate follower
                                                        ­               I am pawn to those who will me
and doormat to those who seek refuge
                                                          ­             I am the lethargic day
that drags into eternity
   the deplorable boredom that hinders life
                                                            ­           I am the sad sap
that rolls down a crying tree
                                                            ­           I am the lack
that fills the vacuum
   the fluff
        that merely attracts the eye while providing nothing
                                                         ­              I am intricate façade
for bland building
                                                        ­               I am sky-filled bottle
with unscrewed cap
   an underman
        with self-contained potential
                                                       ­                I am statistic
a variable trying to escape definition
                                                      ­                 I am athlete
natural as the earth
at heart
   a quitter trained to persevere

                                                      ­                 I am carbon footprint
being slowly blown away by the sands of time

All these things I am
   yet all at once I am not
I am not what you see
   nor what you know
        for I cannot be known
I am not philosopher
   but then again
        if we count what I am not
                                                             ­                                                                 ­         then I do not even exist

                                                          ­             I am not written word
                                                            ­     because paper is constricting

It was the night of Christmas Eve when I was on my own
You came round with Chantelle lowering the festive tone
It was okay until you left and I found that big baguette
Such a time of desperation one time I will not forget
A toilet tragedy I suffered when I discovered your Yule log
Why did you leave that monstrosity inside my ******* bog

I had a drink to calm my nerves but I didn't want to tackle
In the U bend that ******* **** was caught up in the shackle
Trying hard to get rid of that thing with hot water in a bucket
It didn't move with my attempts so I thought "well **** it"
Taking the plunge with pipe unscrewed it wasn't very nice
A gloveless hand you wouldn't want to handle that thing twice

With heavy heart I manhandled that large brown log myself
The size of it I'm petty sure was detrimental to my health
I know that Chocolate logs traditional to celebrate the Yule
Did you have to leave me one made from a combined stool
You blamed Chantelle but I'm not sure if it was her or you
But whichever way you look at it, its a nasty thing to do

So come on just admit it who dealt me that crap card
Getting rid of such a thing well its really rather hard
It really isn't all that much of a Christmas appetizer
Having to disguise it for bin using the local advertiser
Yule be so disgusted if you had crap Christmas news
A real low time of my life with Yule tide log abuse

Next time you decide to call round in the festive mood
Have a **** before you come not meaning to be rude
Don't pass solids in my bog to avoid a repeat performance
I have already reached my peak concerning **** endurance
Use my bog with courtesy without Christmas block activities
I don't want your crap on my hands ruining my festivities

I hit the airwaves almost silently
Hoping out there, somewhere you'll hear me
Because it turns out radio time costs a lot
So here in the a.m., 3:13
I stop the easy going melodies
To tell you that last night you forgot your sock
Wait...
No...
I mean...
Yes you forgot it, but what I really mean
Is what happened last night doesn't regularly
Happen to me, like, ever. I swear
So, now that you know you're an innormality
In this life of mine that's not so lively
I think it's time that I clear the air
...waves
****....
Wait...
I have as much time as information on you
And the ******* we did left me a little unscrewed
As I looked in your eyes and I struggled with your bra
And a one-night stand, I'm not likely to do
But we did... well... a lot, some old stuff and some new
As you gyrated, bit, moved your hips, kissed, and clawed
Ooh...
Wow...
Um...
Times winding down and I've said nothing right
Even if I did, chances are you won't hear this tonight
But all I have is your sock and that's not very fair to me
So what I'm trying to say under that "ON AIR" light
Is that I want to see you again, maybe for a quick bite
So that you might be tempted to leave a new piece of clothing
Well...
Yeah...
Goodnight...

Maybe because I've always been
*******--
Or unscrewed, I suppose--
In the mental department
Maybe because I know he's a friend
He's just as scared of the world as me
He's not some evil figure
Lurking about at night
Intentionally trying to terrify
He's a man all the same
I don't care what his appearance is
He just tries to hide
Seeking refuge and comfort
Trying to hide his lugubrious mind
He just wants a friend that understands
So he lays under the bed
Or sits in the closet
He doesn't even say a thing
Except "Boo-hoo"
When he hears your life story spoken aloud
By your conscious lips
Or subconscious dream clouds
But what most people don't hear
Is the important half
"Hoo"
They hear boo
And awake and scream
Trying to climb into bed with parents
But Mr. Boogeyman hasn't visited
In a long while
And I'm starting to miss him
Maybe he'll come back tonight
But I'm not afraid of the Boogeyman
Because I've met much worse

My father came home                                                             ­                                                             
wit­h a tube of blue                                                             ­                                                                 ­                    
for me.                                                              ­                                                                 ­                             
Dark as half-past midnight,                                                        ­                                                                
but when purified,                                                        ­                          
as clear as the sky  
and babies' bright eyes.                                                            ­                                                                 ­                                           
I warmed it between my                                                               ­                   
welcoming palms,                                                           ­                       
marveling at the thick, round                                                          
tube that, when squeezed, would come                                                  
opaque oceans                                                           ­                                                 
dazzling eyes                                                             ­                                   
mermaid hair                                                             ­                                 
and dragon scales.                                                          ­                        
                                        ­                                                                 ­                   
Yet this same wonder
held
monster claws
Yeti fur
vampire skin
and hot ice.

It was so
dangerously beautiful
my hands hesitated
to curl its delicate fingers
around this mysterious magic.
But then, I remembered,
I hadn’t unscrewed it.

So, consider this:    
There is a pthalo
to every robin's egg,
An indigo
to every turquoise.
Consider this:
Even the most righteous fall.
Trust no one.
Make no friends.
Love none except yourself.
Never dream.
Never dare.
This ode has just taught you
how to
live life
a sealed
tube of blue.

i pawned you and split tails for your headhunt
made more money in one night
larger stacks than i could fill the tub with
came home late
wondered who had eaten my leftovers
gave up quickly
and crept into the windowsill
a nest had buried there
i slid my tongue in and tasted some wild berries
they weren’t my dinner
and the karma had caught up to us both by that point
i unscrewed a light bulb from above my head
and sat in the dark kitchen
the linoleum felt nice on my cheeks
it was a cold night
but I was still hot
i was looking in the fridge
waiting for something to happen
you are so pretty
i can’t even stop looking at you
the image fits into my eyes so frantically
as though my pupils have been carved to your shape
i thought i had devoured you completely
i shouldn't be this hungry still

we'd wake up and play with magic
like any other game of pretend
bath towel tied into a cape
we'd approach an empty plastic top hat
wand in hand
 
we were tapping into an ancient power
that we barely even knew
we've played a superhero, Sub-zero
and now, a miracle worker
there was nothing we couldn't do
 
we'd climb trees to the summit branches
as high as we'd dare to go
we'd lower the hoop and dunk with ease
alley-oops, 360s
sometimes in slow-mo
 
there was nothing but room
to grow and explore
frontiers of the imagination
seized on roller blades with plastic swords
 
we'd tie skateboards to the back of bicycles
and Jamaican bobsled down the street
we were free ninjas in the 90s
off to adventures no one sees
 
we'd front roll down hills like hedgehogs
we'd scrape knees
we'd footrace to the stop sign and back
to pretend we're going faster
we'd kick clouds of dust in our tracks
 
we'd steal bricks from the neighbor's garden
and throw them into lakes to see the splash
we'd throw pebbles to see how high they'd go
or paper planes from the top of the staircases
one time, we jumped off:
it was a dare
we did it though
 
we unscrewed the air cap from the tires
of our enemies' parked cars
we clapped back with super soakers
the block was truly ours
 
we'd play until the streetlights came on
with more discoveries left unseen
and in the shadows while sleeping
we'd play catch with our dreams

I unscrewed my belly button and my **** fell off

incomplete
lost
unscrewed
without a pair

My old vacuum lasted over five years
Can't tell you how many times
I unscrewed it and cleared it with
a wire hanger to make it fine
On TV the Olympics roar
people making history
but I'm just happy with my new appliance
in my humble home, making it clean

A chest of boardwalk
and nails unscrewed,
an arsenal of rusty
marching faceless
graffiti, musty
multi-eyed designs and grinning
tiny men right beside,

with lips rose-pearl, sharp-end.

Right beside small carriages to lend.

Wall art wiping off like a fresh tan
once winter comes, scrubbed
with air-carried sea salt,
reabsorbed into brickish mortar and tin-ringing
structures that overlook sweezshing shoals;
dough-rolled hats kneaded on shake-grain shores.


This is where the wolf pup goes
after it snatches the children of my wide-eyed games,
figments of nativity babies
and their red-cheeked discord.
Wailing betrayal
in a swaddling maw,

Vanishing into these walls,
and like that, more pinched-lipped mini-men
lull this predicament into a then-ling
ceased, ignored as the child-pile
rises in the wolf's den.


The umpteenth hour:

i flip through old calendars and
fill in the boxes of dates and
reassemble daily fates
in my head with pink marker
tracing my palmsandpickingupsomethingwhatisthat—

oh.

just child #62
all plump and fat

growing in my throat,
rapidly birthed
with a nasty cough.

spit in my lungs.
and she cries
and then it's novoctuary (or just june)
and the paws claw kindly, schlep-ripping
my featureless form like knocking at a door,

and this is the departure
of my never-was newborn.

Your on the outside looking in,
It's sad how unmotivated She has been
She's making her way slowly
The ride is getting coldly unenjoyable
For Shes no longer able,
No longer stable,
No longer capable

But your just on the outside Looking in
Every now and then,
Shes wonders what you see
Is it hard trying to be who She be's?
For Once she lost the key,
She payed the cost

Without a key,
Beauty is the only thing she is unable to see
That's why when you look in the eyes of "she"
You wish to run and flee
For her eyes are contained with what looks to be;
The Red Sea  

Her heart is black and blue
For all the bolts are unscrewed
She wishes for everything to undo
But your just on the outside looking at her doom

Some years  ago, there was a Mensa convention in San Francisco .  
Mensa, as you know, is a national organization for people who have an  IQ of 140 or higher.








Several of  the Mensa members went out for lunch at a local cafe.   When  they sat down, one of them discovered that their salt shaker contained  pepper, and their pepper shaker was full of salt.     How could they swap the contents of the two bottles woithout spilling  any, and using only the implements at hand?   Clearly   --  this was a job for Mensa minds.








The group  debated the problem and presented ideas and finally, came up with a  brilliant solution involving a napkin, a straw, and an empty  saucer.






They called  the waitress over, ready to dazzle here with their  solution.






"Ma'am," they  said, "we couldn't help but notice that the pepper shaker contains  salt and the salt shaker  --  "




But before  they could finish,..........

the waitress  interrupted.   "Oh  --  sorry about  that."


She leaned over the table, unscrewed the caps of  both bottles and switched them.








The was dead  silence at the Mensa table.

A reminiscence of a kiss
A paradox of loneliness
Addictive vased solitude
Unscrewed from the walls

I drown in ecstacy
To deck on your shores
As the strong wind fades
I hold the strong anchor

Plucking the unknown
Compressed in reality
Pressing the known
Caressing the phone

To nip, heaped dips
Sinking down depths
The broadcast of us
Where earthquakes traps

Rub my soreness
Deflate the reforms
Unroll the society
Your tremor, my tenor

I extend my arm
Afar to your side
Hold my embrace
Feel my want, my all

I didn't like her as soon as I met her.
She'd known you an hour, and said your name wrong.
But she was pretty and little, and blonde.
You smiled, and charmed, and I rolled my eyes.

For Christ sake.

While you were out for an hour or two,
I knocked on M's door with a bottle of Sprite
from the vending machine downstairs.

Let's toast.

I unscrewed the lid and she uncorked the bottle.
She didn't ask why, just nodded and agreed.

**** yes.

Fizz, fizz. Glug, glug.

There's a mug in my hand, and I'm drinking it up.
Tastes like sweet soda, not at all like wine.
We're sitting in silence, when I start telling M
I don't mind, really I don't.

At least you're over him.

She pours, and I swallow,
the bubbles pop in my mouth.  

I hear you come home, little blondie in tow.

Have a nice night?

I ask loudly, standing too close.
You're toeing your shoes off, and I realize we're alone
in your room.

Go for it!

The wine whispers, urging me on.

Can I help you? I'm trying to change.

I want to do something, but what?
I'm scared you'll smell the sugary alcohol on my breath,
and dismiss whatever I do as a buzzed regret.
But I wouldn't regret it, what I see in my head.
I would go to you. I'd kiss you and kiss you,
till the wine wears off, and my lips are red
and a little bit raw.

Jesus.

That's what I would do.

Articulate Throwback (Amazing Rap that Doesn't Get Enough Respect)
Fielding an eclipsed Jack the Ripper Sun
Yielding dismissal garish, begotten The Matrix smokin’ gun
Wielding a firebrand skittish
Skills levied an intolerable tax by quisling quoted British
Stunting on heyday levity marksman of primes
Flogged for flagrant dragons sinking nickels and dimes aimed beatific sublime
Flowing like centripetal orbit  galvanized by riddled spirits dashed in secondary impetus of reason over rhyme
Littoral swank partial to Taylor Series of dedications Speak Now peaks livid with fumiducts of crippled sheep blandished for reach
Apologies invited always welcome for a kitsch debased by universal theaters yet united for Payable on Death singing the deceit of receipts impeached
Islanders flooding suicides punning that a sunken treasure is barbs smuggling
Otiose on ribald corsairs blinkered by the rhombos of speculation thunder itself about lightning starts wondering
Where a City by the Bay shining on a Hill of travesties of decay tanks for domesticated Negros that flashbangs got to slay
To the wistful shaken house music garnishing the prey of prayer on heavy pulls of quotable 415 hay-day
The wrinkled stray dog never  far from *****
Slapsticks against the tribunes awaiting for meteoric functions of a recessive allele of a dominant comet
Ludacris flickers dancing in dormant revelry because On Top, Just Let Go..I am honest and On It
To the milk of harvested stars glaring at tankers and garish broken FaceMash scars teetotalers scatter with Thursday crashing into glass shards
Black fame is a white epiphany of infamy designated by name
Of the craven coltish spinsters who market the crackling whiplash of sanity apportioned to the regaled insufflation of blame
Streaky on a jejune Diggity hapless hop of Kumbayas etched by Trailer Park’s scalding flop
Glorifying a Gangester heir to titanic humbled beginnings chockablock divested to Kennedy’s dead Candy Shop
Impressive rags of riches of counterfeit tags blundering with lazy LASER Tag of sharks too bellicose to earn a pitfall pittance of swag
Trippin’ by tripwires too flippant to be flippin’ on known graves sidesplitters of treecheese yaggots grimaced on madcaps of bottlecaps swimming in ether of money too happy for House of Pain rags of gag orders intrepid because some blood is Bad
****** drapes of tapestries too woven on Ducking Badger duck tape
Pretending not even a slightest twinge of celebrity faked is a tantamount affliction to Kobe’s escape
Time to rig the 7/11 notoriety of a caper drawl in Cape Town Blue Sky Action can barely offer scrape
Let them eat cake and heads roll like Nicholas Cage clairvoyant in mystique quaking like a Quaker parody rank-and-file rancid graveyard creep
Cuz the best in the Business evokes singes of Dre grazed persistence a Space Rover rather than a broken-down drive-by Vegas Cheap Holyfield Jeep
Forgeries in trigonometric time gone haywire because ******* of fools is delicious neutered ballistic wrong with elemental statistic
Armed to the Teeth because twinges of righteousness is strongly established because it elevates truces well-predicted
Reckon the self-aware hive jetsetting with Jive warbles of departure yet to arrive
“Talk” of those fewer in knowledge yet living an invented diatribe
Lil Dicky mumbling his churlish codling vendetta
Too petty on the game like a turgid Mariah Carey Christmas Sweater evaporating on benzo bleats because exaggeration is a measuring stick more prone to delusion than the vapid version of Eddie  Vedder
Ripping through seamstresses of time a delope from impoverished cesspool grime
Certainly not swinging with sockdolagers like Musk as UPS owns insider angles about BitCoin riches scoffing at #11 Sublime
I owe respect to an upstart prescience scowling hatched never against fragile egg-shell minds
He’s the predecessor to the Walter White of cesspool inveterate rivets in hulking pretense of a measured stick lying like Tony  Hawk on the grind drawling on videogame addicts lost to numbers like Wall Street bet on fractions divisible like Scarface on cardinal crime
Blip on the WHIP cackles of clever pasquinade owned by sizzurp of Red Wings demolished like Draper balking at the West Coast ****** of East Coast royalty etiolating on Life After Death because of a teased script of March 26th shining bright like nine-inch nails longer than an exaggerated Dicky loving pollution more than Sina Loa loves bricks
Mad respect to juggernaut Michigan flow, but when you henpeck a rooster fewer regaled Ravens start to sing like Tomorrow’s sung by Sheryl Crow
So attack the kenspeckel hiding like sobriety itching to revel
Even the greats are grating despite prestige owned like Steppenwolf inventing Heavy Metal
Yet the raspy dengonin certainly a curtain call for the moribund smooth competition genius but not square to my elevated level
Time to brush aside, politics is a Velvet Morning rather than an Everest scaffold of glaciers divide
Flourishing Eden of a Seattle worthy of treason on rollercoasters yet to ride
The contumely of charlatans berating brassage is a Lie Boring in Federal Way united against prejudices scowling because Qwersy Mencia is too fraught to enjoy the jeers of a tattered Pride
Past-Tense Quinn in his Chauvin Blue Suit is Queer on The Bends
For a better radio the shatter of the quaff is Damon on the mendlatch for the rights of heroism among men
Applesauce is scary when the cooks are too chary for emoluments of cherry-picked vanity inoculated because hackneyed hacksaws aren’t that scary
To a Rush Hour acclaim that owes a Martian a fair-share of the inviolable degrees above freezing that guarantees the Hang Seng
The cretaceous dinosaur livid in the Fields of Dreams lives to the honor of the author rather a subsidiary prosperity rooting for the same exact team
Credit belongs not to slot-machine jibes of Navy throngs because the sealed pedigree of a Potemkin stonewall ravaged an Atlanta March that Richard Sherman found himself wrong
Ripostes of wavered glory serenade Field’s Medal accolades jaunty with brimstone repartee for persecution of Sing-Sang jailed avuncular Dana Carvey
Crumpled in missives etched decisively by Popcorn paparazzi Lee Harvey Oswald Part Three dinging Reagan’s Drugs because belittled Batman and Robin Harvey Dent is on a defalcation spree
Limited by the gambit of orbit I flex space measured only by perception hourglasses mistake for Dewey Decimal ministry
Because mountebanks of the tramontane canard unscrewed by Donkey’s without the triumph of vindicated colts spew the unwarranted without the warrant of upright parlance
Deflecting the useless caricature of Jezebels they barely even know dancing with fisticuffs choleric with jaundiced illuminati chants of an age bracing for the venom of viper’s of gratuitous pretense in violence because the whittled conscience scourges footloose profligacy in dementia that owns probability rather than certainty but doesn’t stand a chance
A billowing toxic fume of a Trojan Horse of galloped complicity of headless horsemen too scared to even pinprick the average Brett Hume huffs like mad wolverines dancing with Buccaneers for the fidelity of bridled brides with a tailored or sloppy groom
Cowering behind plashy starlets dashed for authenticity too soon
The Red Robin Hood ****** of silhouettes of Caste system indecency is reduced to reductivism in peddled paranoia of Randall Graves confronting his deepest specious tomb
To rogue slipshod miracles of denuded ice for Christopher Reeves Wally World White in Simple Jack owleries of confiscated light they caper encaged Caspergers ergotamine flavored favor uptight
Glaring prince dashing Rusty with ***** for Hummers glazed with donut torus hummus swift with reverend repartee
Sunken sleepless abyss ghosts haunt for quaffs evanescent in backbone bliss incurring parted sight for nebbich sprees
Calculated by persnickety prattle brazen with bravado promontory sparked on the flames of an overhyped hysteria ablaze
Raisins aren’t the determinant of a blinkered starstruck page gilded to amaze
Formidable reform conserved against blasphemies of ****
Withstands the immutable geotaxis of inevitable backfires in limited scourges of scorn
Time to sacrifice the badge earn the primacy of trimleggers making a dash rushing for hourglass sand prominent in fiat flash
In a second a trampoline against a specious marvel is a sour remorse of a crusade turning into protection not found in autumn ash
With autarky righteous rain boogies against bogeys of golfers livid with sensational inane
Lunacy predicated on sensational maudlin labors of Genesis 3:16 birth pain
Incurred upon the toil of the lugubrious heights of teachers that defy tribes and stripes
Soldiering for God without even the slightest nefarious mercenary spite
Because Ledgers cannot be mistaken for legends because petty battles Abandoned Pools named were avoided for Nobel Prizes of moonshot fame never King Kong because 24k magic called the Hang Seng  game enter stage right
The thematic liberation of the freewheeler isn’t a combustion of truckers Ruckers allergic to chattered shame
But the time honored Sevendust defies blisters because a brave heroism leaps into legacy vaunted by cheery repute in winning hegemony against rigged fraud in frigid feral tames
I march to an inaugural chance without a chance of quick inauguration because Junetao is a duck-duck-go childish flicker against Amsterdam Vallon besides the church with a touching spectacle of solidarity beyond temporal Anacondas of deserved blame
An ally to the kitsch the prosperity of Nas is afforded to optimism never so fulgurant because of a bewitched Tik Tok twitch
As the true flock regards the true shepherd the guardian of wonder and the captain avoiding Yellow Submarines because Stayin’ Alive is a prophecy not a febrile contagion of germs pitching tents for flukes insistent on incident rather than honorable to Canada Dry on Strike for better than a bubble gum mumble rap of Lil Pump’s pruned humps for a ******* ghost rider rather than a profaned itch
But the camel survives because the needle doesn’t thrive in a world where God is always Stayin’ Alive to strike a pose for the voguest Jive
“The Seduction” lives and the corruption limps with glib bribery fibs because 2 Timothy 1:7 in autarky is a generous rhyme that  gives and gives
In endless crusade to beat like David the ***** of a poker miracle that stars in a showcase of a life of splendor eternal rather than a cursory kamikaze reckless fib
Its time for  abundance of life to be lived fully to truly find riches in the best possible life winsome in discretion to quake and yet remain immune to a Walgreens of Stonewall myth
Cast not the first stone against the immaculate Giant because everybody is shaking to Bond and Saint Joseph’s guarded wordsmith

If you could only let it drop
we would not need to bear it:
that holy hoity-toity
illiberal burden you announce
from where you wear it.

Would you then be able to live
with your fellow citizens:
fellow toilers in rhyme
buying gluten-free time
at Whole Foods
US; your citizen-neighbors
online cloud of witnesses
Looking at used Subarus
and paying our dues
with you
at the dealership.

Could you only see
through deplorable eyes
and love with a deplorable heart
you would appreciate the art
of the real deal,
loose the seal
of your own apocalypse;
let love reveal
landscapes your pride
has kept hidden for too long.

If you could let your hatred drop,
Slough off the smug and the sneer
If you could stop
signaling to your own
long enough to know REAL diversity, and live
perhaps you’d give
a thought to your own fallibility
lost in a forest of woulds, failing to see
Your neighbor’s Tree of Life. . .
But you are busy perfecting strife,
screaming Timber!
before the axe has even been laid
at the root of your poetry.

If you knew, as the rest of us
how often you have shouted thus
you could understand why
we tend to ignore your warning cry.

Perhaps it could be feasible
to stop blaming
that orange source of all unreasonable
derangement, cease from naming
your neurotic projections
as they are unscrewed
to reveal another inside:
crazed conspiratorial Russian doll
of your own
discredited obsessive offended perpetual alarm.

Alien’s heaven

poems

Barton Smock
June 2015
 

 
pilot light

baby, baby talk, and pilot light.

kitchens everywhere,
god is alone.
 
no brain

father smokes to make something disappear. he says he’s no brain but can pass for touched each time the bug is resurrected. when he rolls out of a blanket and into the side of a building, I believe again in the man mistaken for god’s pencil. mother can’t leave him anymore than she can leave her ears. terrify no one your childhood knows.
 
son

it was born in a bath of milk when there was milk to burn.  it drew with daylight.  when asked for details, it pulled a shadow’s tooth.  we took it to a movie, a war movie, where it made its first noise.  its pain went everywhere.  it sold, it sold until it ran out of clothes.  its mothers had fight.      
 
knees

visiting hours are set by a god who knows I smoke.  leaving my mark means I’ve pressed the barrel of a cap gun into my brother’s temple because the ****** keeps scooping into his ballcap the same toad.  my two fathers are here to bounce things off my mother when she prays.  sit long enough and ***** will dry them together.        
 
yearly

our collective identity is a sick child. some say fever, some say welcome to the loop of the biblically speechless. people are for others. are for making eyes at the gender of the god as it oversleeps in the coma we slip from. the child prays. the child causes a stir in the pastoral urgency of a moral imagination. we pray. we miss yearly the showdown between the town drunk and the town ghost. I trace a finger to put my finger on. the television belonging to our lady of snowy reception has fallen on our little angel more than once. nothing in the world is the world.
 
boy and gun

it entered my heart
to take a bird
from the world.
I felt nothing.    

the recent absence
of nothing.  
 
vernal

when you begin
to show
say
instead
you’ve a soft

spot
for god
 
race

says poverty
someone
at this table
has nothing to hide.

says father
touching
a UFO
cures frostbite.

says mother
open
the stomach
of the winning
monster.
 
area

somewhere, the mostly boy body pretends to be explored.  we are not we.  my mother ruins a sketch of my mother.  my father smokes two packs a day because online he was called prematurely haunted.  the name of your existence

is

priest retires to make umbrella for jack-in-the-box.  (her bus

is rain)
 
barbaric terms

each twin
slower
than the last, she spits

over my dead body

baby
after baby
out.

as news
of the massacre
spreads, the young
call it mother
by word

of mouth.
 
longing*     *for Gen

the baby boy stiffens at the sight of unrolled dough.  we say he is pointing the way to god.  crippled by the sadness in her hand, his mother keeps a claw mark like one keeps diary.
 
closings

trespassers
shoot themselves.

your son gets hired
by city

to illustrate
a book on mirrors
for households
with one
adult.

my son
dies
before the machine
that keeps him
alive

turns on.

a doll in doll country
burns its nose
trying to enter
the future
museum
of racist
oddities.

my hand tries my hand at forming
firstborn
erasures
using only
redactions.

god is exiled
for bringing
the animal
its childlike
behavior.

I am far too animated.

your body is the notice
eyes

give.
 
ins

night
the land
of a single
unseen
settler  

-

father
half eye, half oil    

-

self, self panic
 
bloodless     for Noah

my brother was blinded by a crow.

I’d tell you the story
but know
you hate it.

*******.

brother’s darkroom
became
the crow’s.
 
breathing spells

I chased only
the brother
I’d dreamed
of beating.

I told my sister
she didn’t have
a tail. told mother
it’s not suicide

unless you ask
to be born. I had a hand
for the year
father

went quiet
a hand
for the year
father

went quiet
for good. had dolls
over which

dying
out of character
held sway.
 
intelligence

magic amplifies in my loneliness a single flaw.

a bird, a high window. sound of a brain cell.

hunger and its unremarkable kitchen.

as a doctor I hammered the baby’s knee.

bio, and the undisclosed location of god’s recovery.

harm is harm’s audience.
 
disability jargon

i.

when it opens the bomb
it knows
like my brain knows
what it sees

ii.

homicide grief
is a recording
god’s message
speaks to

iii.

eight years old
she leaves the trampoline
in her body’s
fearful
accounting
of self
 
concord

cap gun.  swag from an uncle’s suicide.  

the daughter
the ghost
cartoonist.

voodoo dolls
in isolation.  isolation

in its prime.    
 
altar

the baby is too light.  its mother puts it on a scale that reminds her of a plate her empty childhood couldn’t break.  its mother invites neighbor boys to punch her in the stomach.  some of the boys bail.  some don’t.  the mother’s nickname doubles as her real.  the baby is not called bricks.


 
zero

when I couldn’t get my head around the surrender of my body to the flotation device of an immaculate conception, I’d simply swallow a baby that had swallowed a pill.  years go by and I am zero.  the number arrested for suicide.        



 
basics

because he is asleep, he does not find himself sleeping in the tub.  something slides from his belly and becomes wedged.  his dream business goes under even in dream.  he makes eyes at CPR manikins.  his son, his life, pushes for legs.
 
preparedness

you look like you’ve just been given permission to sleep in your clothes.

it’s a **** whistle only crows can hear.

it’ll put sheep
on the moon.
 
outlet

depression is a non-starter.  depression is depression unknowingly cured.  it is like I have this shirt because it exists and not because it invites everyone whose shirt it’s not to enjoy joy.  I don’t want to hear you say you’re sad to say.  I ******* to reappear and think it might be why my father vanished.  it’s enough during foreplay to flicker.

 
viewership

my youth spent trying to see the devil as a young man.  my motherly youth.  my **** scene a return to form.  cut from yours, you have your baby’s eyes.  I went unborn.  I went beaten.  we went together in broad daylight when broad daylight was god’s elevator.


 
pressure

the original thought in my head was to be postdated by god until god learned he had a baby on the way.  I had children until I could only have four.  what I say to self-harm is pay attention.  my daughter raises her hand on the off chance she buried something in her teacher’s body.  (we have stopped talking

but I can squeeze her anorexia into a phone booth)  poverty myth:  I groom my sons with the beak of bird abandoned.  real time I tell my tongue it’s ******* curtains for the mouth I’m getting.  full circle my daughter surrounds those brothers of hers that mine clone.        
 
high

mother, in the early stages of her food fight with god.

father, I can’t bury
my face.

in lieu    
of the lord’s
dog, raise

the lord’s
bone.
 
the mice

the conditions for mentally composing a suicide note for his sister are less than perfect. she’s sitting on his bed with a cigarette in one hand and his baseball glove on the other. both hear three traps snap shut in the kitchen. sister gags and it makes him think about gagging. now no more, these were the heart of the note.
 
signal

as my face
will one day
correct
my body
I expose

the elements
to my
ugliness  

-

my son is my search

history

-

headlights
when headlights
emerge
emerge
from a period
of non
worship

-

(wave your arms
long enough
you’ll have sticks
for arms)

-

they don’t  
happen
in my
lifetime
the terrible
things
I’ve done  
 
observance

when drought came
to my brother
I left
for the city
where I found myself
blanketing
manhole covers
with my coat
for women
who gathered
on rooftops
with men
whose daughters
had been killed
for jumping
rope
 
peril

I bit my tongue
when my tongue
was a cloud.

take cover, bones,
says my daughter
dancing.

I crushed my son
like a gift
and offered
god
my tactile
outlook.

stay small, future.  

persuade
a peephole
to show
some blood.      
 
no devil

the knock knock joke in need of my father’s skull is all that’s left of the outside world. hell was always the preparing of hell.
 
inseparable

mother is watching a show that keeps her from picturing the gods who portray us.  father is choosing an ice cube to bury.  myself I am very close to stripping for the cigarette my sister rescued from a baby’s crayon box in a dream that smelled like her clothes.      
 
masters

I have just had it written down for me how I am not classically racist. I am alone. I am brief stay of bullet. god is using each hair on my head to scribble on my son’s thought process. when I think of crab legs I think in color of the lightning bolt it snows inside. I miss mom. gospel, gospel that I hang these rags for invisible crows.
 
was

ask now my father if it still believes the present to be the future of a past life.  

ask then if it unscrewed one day each inessential light bulb that my party would have balloons.  

-

violence in movies.  also, food.  my mistake.  I glue myself

to nothing.  my shyness

-

is kind of
my angel.  

-

the body invents the soul it recalls.
 
gauze

the boy’s mother is biting off less than he can chew.  her insomnia
has put her inside a worm
her body
tries
to fill.  her milky eyed

-

husband
revs a tow truck
to death
in a heavy fog.  it is possible, humanly

-

possible

-

there’s nothing
to see here.  that her god

-

is, in a sense,
seizure activity
in the boy’s
spirit

-

animal.  
 
image

and do not
believe, as such, that yours
is a body

leads god
to inquire
 
godless

godless
balloon
animal
 
root effects     for Miles J. Bell

like he’s laying
yellow
on his road
out of grief
brother
takes a drag
and keeps it
until his head
is underwater
is what they call
with apples.

his eyes
have always been
two poverties
unexplored.  he is old, alien’s

heaven
he is old
but not before
he knows it.
 
the alien wept but was not heard weeping

not all
drones
dream
of you

sometimes i feel like I'm walking up a down staircase
like the whole world is moving in one harmonious direction
and I'm lost in a sea of roads antagonized by dead ends
my head feels crazy
bolts are unscrewed and wires are crossed
a mechanical malfunction
sometimes i am up
up up up
my skin tingles with activity
dynamite in under the surface ready to be detonated
vibrations circulate
and cells dance with one another
i am wild
animalistic
invincible

sometimes i am down
down down down
darkened hope reigns
a wave of black water runs around me in circles
my lungs spill over with it and i suffocate
my throat burns with sorrow
suspended in pure agony
as the waves laugh and swallow me
i am devoured by ebony
terrorized by my own thoughts
body stuck in a tar of sadness
i feel death smile down on my distortion
he waits for the waves to finally drown me

Some times i am red
red red red
anger is all there is
it clouds my vision
making my ember eyes glow
fire runs through my blood
feeding into my muscles
pure rage envelops me in its choke hold and i lose control
violence plays my core like a set of flaming drums
furry has made a home in my chest
covered in red, the anger waxes
consuming me in a blood moon

up
down
red
up
down
red

a see-saw in my head.

A pile of human teeth lies next to the faucet
Only proof that she had lost it
The blood drips through the pipe
Another premonition of life
You can hear the screams from above
And all she wanted was to give him a hug
We always thought she was unscrewed
It was only until she killed us, we knew the truth
Every step forward she makes is a step back for life
They all knew that when she had her knife
She smiles as she cuts the throat
She just needed another rope
To hang the regret she felt
That was the only thing to make her melt
Fall apart and burn
Is all she wanted to turn
The voices that taunted her again
But this time she wanted them to win
So she could take another life out for a spin
And her famous ****** plot was about to begin

I spent my days in search of you
Mending broken hearts with a simple thread
Through the looking glass I saw her legs spread
Bending here and there for you
Until the ***** came unscrewed
And the nail was broken in two

Gone!

Teeth like a chattering cage,
spit trickles down my chin;
a lost age insane with rage
originated from an unknown cause.

Effect!

All that you affect connects
like a forgotten dream
returning to focus,
lens cap unscrewed,
tinted glass rendezvous with you
and the rest are plenty *******, too.

Suspense!

Intense instrumental theme
heard once in last month’s dream,
tho’ it’s hard to recall the rest,
save for the way you were dressed
in that gown covered in dismal ash
and the sound we made as that bus crashed.

Death!

Interrupted breaths everywhere we could look,
blood streaks in our hair and in our eyes,
with vague corpses sprawled out on the road,
the heat pulsating on the pavement, soon to explode.

Premonition!

Grungy revved engine of a soul bound for hell,
followed by a gargling fit of a throat slit well;
a thousand ****** of a thorn bush behind my eyes
welcoming me to the world before my love dies,
proceeded by a man who couldn’t see the stars,
and now he sees them fine but it lacks the grace
that intoxicated his state whenever he saw your face.

Regret!

Wish I’d lost that game of roulette instead of you
as my lonesome legs dangle on our rented crater
on our empty moon shielded by those clouds
that once made us so **** proud;
now remorse’s just so **** loud.

Silence!

Occupied by fits of violence in this web of mold,
folded small enough to slip right through my pocket
and those ****** are enraged as I claw my socket,
but of course that only inflames it even more,
pumping steel on this bus and I’ve locked the door;
salty bliss in view where I’ll finally join you;
forgive me dear, this time I’ll help you through,
revel as I tune in to your luminescent level
where we’ll bathe in our sublime crescent,
sealed in the splash of my welcomed crash.

Home!

Misconstrued are my Mental health needs
Not Intensionally Mean
Nor even Malicious deeds.

Never really put together and left unscrewed;
With broken seems and bubbly brew

I can't help but to be unsteady.
Must I always stay guarded, prepared and ready?
It's like a battle with man after man...
Enemies I'm beheading.

Sounds of piercing pain, ****!
Their flesh shreds threw sharpened fans.
As I walk away unapologetically,
I find pity for ones that ran.
A heartless beauty, naturally!
Her only motto is 'You Can!'

I was living the only way I knew how.
Reliving my past; only heartaches allowed.
That was until last October, I met my match...
I finally fell victim for getting attached!

...Her war is finally over!
He conquered her within the abyss
Blood drunk to gratefully sober.
Now nobody has seen him ever since.

there’s an open
wound on main street
and i wish people would
stop asking about it
because every question pulls
the hole a little wider

something was always
just a little bit
wrong

a constant drip
in the fridge

a fruit fly trapped
in the bake case

missing corners
of floor tiles

pictures hanging
slightly crooked

one foot of a table
unscrewed to a wobble

the rattle
of the heater

smiles from those
i couldn’t trust

a tiny pinprick of
stress behind my eyes

every year was
the year that would
make it or break it

so nobody was
surprised
except those who
couldn’t see the scuffs

last year
things were supposed
to be so good
everyone talking
mad **** about their
incredible ideas

i had a few
ideas of my own
nobody ever had to
teach me how to
dream big
overachieve
overexert myself
and fall hard

the quiche crusts stuck
to the bottoms of pans

and there was no way to
get the slice out
without the whole entire
thing falling apart

i might have been
the first slice to go

but at least i got
out of there

before the hand that
pulled me out
was the hand that
dropped the pan

a glass pie plate
shattered and
the way things were
supposed to be suddenly

over
just
like
that

and i’m still
reeling
on the sidewalk
staring at the
empty shell of
something i once loved

big hopes
big dreams
big plans
small town
too small to
hold them all

every piece of my
future points
backwards
arms of a clock
working their way
into the past

it’s not in how
the damage was done
but in how you
heal from it

there’s an
open wound on
main street
maybe if we gave
south street stitches
we could pull it closed

but still i question
my existence as if
scones and coffee
and thursday mornings
before sunup were
the only things that
gave me
stability

maybe
they were

maybe people
pull themselves into
an orbit around that
which keeps them grounded

an orbit of
routine and the
dissonance needed
to stir ice cubes
in a plastic cup
to create peace
in the moment
of chaos

or maybe
the one place
that always felt
like home to me
was just a cafe
on the four corners
and now there’s
an open wound
not so much
on main street
but the pocket of my
heart where hope lives

I grapple with the everyday
nothing smooth
a sumo wrestler on ice skates
a one armed juggler
a 4 eyed ******
the muck and slime
that passes for normal
has overtaken my well
climbed my wall
I'm unfit to fit
too unscrewed to view
through a filtered lens
don't smile at me when you pass
but stop and ask what the **** is wrong with you
wake me up
and maybe I'll speak
maybe I'll peek around the corner this time
to see how high the **** has gotten
to see my childish dreams forgotten
and buried in the lies
that I've become

My bodies cold
lips are blue
why did I do this because of you?

I feel the earth below me
like a pillow under my head
no knives, no guns, but pills instead

The bottle lays empty
cap unscrewed
what did I do? what did I do?

My spirit floats my body lays
my lover finds me
and she prays

I reach for him
I'm ****** away
like a deep crest of a wave

she pounds the ground
screaming why oh why?
I asked myself why did I?

My parents arrive, my best friend too
I thought to myself, What did I do!?

I look away the pains to deep
my life is over because of me

I look back for one last glance
they zip me up in the body bag.
I did this to ease my pain
I lost instead of gained

as I look down my family
I regret that night
my life stopped ticking
because of a fight.

Stilted lingerie that fashions a kneaded traipse between trap-door destiny of double-take simultagnosia is a harder fright to outfox that even the most ghoulish amicable maskirovka of a throttled sapience beleaguered by the tropes of a tattermedalion class of Scarface vigor in the face of benighted tomes of a cruised palindrome of efficacy bromides flickering on the outskirts of esoteric thrones of catapults droning on about the listless squalor of philandering phronesis of ecdysiast *** in the cyprian hedges of limited wealth bemoaning the poverty of deprivation because of whiskers through feline sight languid in the remedial dances of captaincy snuck between the edges of destiny cordial only to Home Alone. We must sneak through the verdant pacification of an accordion grimace flanged by the eked snide spite of termagants of termination ruined by the future flickering into past distance because of spartan brutish mannequins of pasteurization glimpsing the thanatousia of death vindicated by vengeance brazen with a Colorado snare of a pinned etiolation of marauders of corsairs that only brave the delusion when the eternity is a trick-or-treat truth and dare consummated on the flimsy agape lychgates of constraints in flair that damage the ragged hypostasized engine of a blinkered hubris belonging to an anointed rigmarole fashioned into the pottery of fungible metamorphosis rather than frangible pulverization that scrapes through liturgy with abnegation rather than relishing plumage beyond the apes of apish planetary scares.


Trimming the blockbuster wearisome hardihood of plumes of fumigated regal ******* in the softened epigone of whiter masks of screaming scares
The times aplenty of swansong ignorance are a plaid disaster of Twister renegades that spar against the visagist carapace of hearkened live aware of ghosts that fuel the hypocrisy of belligerent mares
Forever stranded through the finifugal heaves of a 32 leaves magician of rollicking base jumps with acidic tatters in King of the World stunts the hirsute body politic is a pump and dump trumpery of livid thrills on the substitution of funk for skunk rather than grooves for humps
Nevertheless the scrappy schlep of a foggy dreary destiny is ablaze with Sergeants blistering through Forest Gump bumps as the alighted 80s returns with a vengeance in empires of victory rather than slippages of slump
Renewed by the litigable menace of oilers ****** with crudity and swimming in the askew verdure of the lewd and **** we bolt through the coltish demiurge of fastened fascination flaming with firebrands of deliberation scampering away in blemishes of profanity too rude
We scrape the legacy of elegant injustice and injury because the flamestun hypocrisy of leprosy caused by time is a rustic blue suede shoe that flummoxes in hibernation because of staggered queues ravishing too much of a screwball to be nailed because black artifacts are always unscrewed
Thanks to teamwork the cosmogony of regalia knows the Montana providence of a lissome liposuction radical in renewal because of the Morrison Hotel rather vacant but always populated with a carpal tunnel of slick oleaginous dramatics for histrionic history likable because the news is a purple hue relishing the paradise of cineaste rundles of candlelit mood
Imagine searing the sunlit halidom of the peak-time grooves of unbuttoned blarney frank and swiveled on sclerotic pretense slippery in fashion only to be ironclad in personas of the whispered woo in termagant liturgy that is a colporteur of genius hinged upon collective suitcases of IOUs blameless because the criminal is always hatched upon a 108 pentagon of newsy gripping footage of managerial flames of a barnstorm beyond booths but never above the scarecrow minister of the voguish tempers of trudgery spawned into the folkspun homely ties and wrinkles of wizened love too Titanic to be used
Parker hobohemia scowls at the punitive warbles of marsupial kingpin southern flashes of hyperborean ramshackle ruins of pooches scampered around like littoral fragments of a cinematic crudity in defeated torpindage blistering with foresight in vengeance because the clockwork hour is amazed but horrified by belligerence in overdosed ledgers of legends amused
Time hearkens that craven radication of rhizogenic demiurge blinking above the sleeping awake ringleaders of sedition enthused because of malapert princes crackling with homage to honed sharpened edges of a double-edged whisper reversal into the antithesis of the heaving red serrated by the vindication of impertinent criminals flustered by the pinpointed genius of the Primarily Blues.
Time sees past the sedative fliction of fictitious mangers on primipara  tunes that the euphoria of the now is the cement of every LP belonging above the charlatans of chavish sutured into a surgical effigy of the whitewashed preeminence of discernment into the discs that surpass the ashen cordiality of permissive and permissible leaky faucets rasping through the headlines because of craters of love becoming glabrous above the halvorked entropy of newsy Newport News living above Virginia in Deep Impact legends tipsy on shipwrecks happening too soon to be  immaculate in any crimson style of an inescapable rhyme scheme trying with clambered witticism to achieve belletrist while escaping capstone filigrees of untouchable Terry Crews.
Flickering whimpers of the scary impenetrable Kansas City brain of the touchy hedges of fumigated marstions of erratic flackeys of breweries enthused in an amazed skullduggery of time slipping on crackles of fizzgigs of clambered retinues of radical roots between a tight avenue and a broadened broadway limping on the cinemas that belong to the truth and not the rickety barnstorm of ostentation encased by bonanzas to pontifical to create a topspin of HappyGilmore erasure in bridewells of roomy litigation in uncomfortable contortions of contacts without lenses to excuse.
In the cavernous spelunk of 1990s crimson bleeding into the  expansive liturgy of the ripples of percolation cornered into diminished vacancy anointed as ritualized contrition craving a tighter grip on the tightest swank that could ever be parlayed into New England madcap screws the hunters of the hunted hypocrisy become the travail of the antagonized epiphany of flackey rice in avaricious retches beyond the squabble of punks in due times for clockwork tickers and tickets swarming with infested blemish
The ridicule of sapience is the knowledgeable manicure of livid lurid hypertrophy in exaggeration of the knowledgeable tongue of the Flemish foundering on seaworthy chemists of menace and muse too suburban to ever be urbane bourgeosie limited rankled rancid rancor of ramshackle rackrent gouges too much of a Beetlejuice excuse.
Rhythm for the fulcate furrows of the hypogeiody of epochs slinkywith aced endeavors for misadventure likened to the greatest oiler in the 1980s terror list is a craven capture of photogenesis in rapture that fastens seatbelts of strawberry deaths of crackles of blinkered hubris accelerated by the twisters of vulcanized culmination blasted for history for headlines in ravines of mastery beyond the persnickety prestidigitation of magic sarcasm in the avalanche of dynasty never nastier than violence vile in acerbic posterization of plumage that is blacker than Rush Hour in the menace of Dennis in fractal philosophy funneled into one brittle muster of height rather than weight in freakish geometries of squirrels battering a home run cast away in fracture

poetry
it is the way the pen taps at an anxious hand
waiting for the words to catch up to emotions
your head unscrewed at the top
your thoughts dribbling down your cheeks
in droplets onto paper

ink flows with ease
when flowers blossom in your mind
reaching their way through your chest
or
when your heart is clenched so tightly
to keep from shattering

i sit here empty
sunken eyes
cracked fingers trace paper
and i am uncomfortably numb

evil has looked back at me
razors down my back
i’ve felt the sun on my mind
a heart of healed cracks

i cursed the past
tried something new
and i managed somehow to live
without holding you

tonight simply i’m nothing
blank as the page before me
i hope that soon
the universe hands me
a bouquet of life
a handful of seeds
that i can plant as new thoughts

i need something