Today I shed some tired eyes
Under leaves, leaves with corners
and sharp edges
Today I shed some weary legs
Upward over the mountain
down into the streams
The fragrant and decaying
The cloying and the stagnant
Odd how a man can look over miles of open country
& see nothing but subdivisions
Odd how a man can look at another
& **** for a belief
Odd how a man can smile into the empty bottle
& see no light through the glass
Bones buried under sand a time, bulldozed another foot deeper
Someones kid hidden behind a picture in a wallet
We hid somewhere, in those bushes in the field
Hid from ourselves
Listened to the creek and tried to decipher language
The tea your brewed sits cold in my hands
And the smiles you shared sit cold in my lips
We drank together on the beach, me and these guys
Selling cigarettes to put food on the table
While their sisters sold themselves
And all I could decipher through my drunkness
Was that I wasn't supposed to be there
Never was, never was

I sit with these ugly ballpoint words and think of you
I sit with these grasshopper thoughts and think of nothing
I sit with my feet in still water, my eyes on dead clouds
I think of the broken days
Blackout wine bottle days
Writing on the wall on where to ride trains to
Through New Mexico, to drift
Fall off the face of it for a while
Bootknife nights

We spoke through the cigarette smoke
How we didn't choke I'm not sure
Made me put them down
For good

It was odd, watching those dogs eat those camels
In the sand dunes
The bodies of a car accident lopsided and covered in someones
sheets
Drove for days, small cities, large refineries
An empty ocean that seemed to carry its sand into the horizon
Dune after dune
Somehow we bargained a pack of smokes for two
Saudi riyal

I drank to much and said to little, she always said
Over and gone, pictures on the fridge
Sleeping at 2, waking at 5
Eyes heavy and the first cigarette
A cup of coffee and the slow realization
That the sun remains to rise

I shed the weight,
my pack off, and the dirt in my lungs
and the nicotine in my lip,
the copenhagen gave off quite a flavor,
and the smile on your lips  
gave off quite a character, and the coughed up dirt and sand,
and watched the clean ones walk by,
us drunk masers,
sipping water,
no,
chugging it, to get the dryness out,
and to make the world a little cleaner
with our spit, my comrades,
my compadres, my sombreroed
masters of delight.
watch casablanca
with
me

We sat in shade, watched cirrus circle sun, robbing temporary
warmth
Hands through burlap & jute, clutching at photons illuminating
eyelashes
Cedar sap & crushed pine needles, fragrant on our hands, amber &
ambient
Saw your heart through crooked teeth, the same as
mine
A hundred pounds of saw grass hair & pliable
emotion
Speaking of a hitch through New Mexico,  a night on that lake,
where you convinced me you could
make clouds disappear
Speaking of a first kiss in a creek bed, that night we watched
Javelinas and Mule Deer
Fireworks by the river, smoke so thick we lost
each other
Our ugly handwriting, tucked into breast pockets, notes on
the back of old receipts
Empty bottle love, scattered & sporadic,
ours, ours, ours

Spun up from ground level
A thousand blades of grass
Under a pair of scarred feet
Ocean breaks calmly on sand and smooth pebble
We find a space between it
Colors broken down into coded text
Light refracted, time distracted

I smiled under the shade of the paint chipped wall
Over the scent of juniper and gin
We drank from the bottle like heathens
Wandered crowds, a microcosm of a world
gone mad
Here’s to you babe, here’s to you

We chose this, you know?
Fleeting streams of style and ****** days
Of such tired contemplation
Collar bones carrying the ink of skilled fingers
dexterous and agile
These hands carry bones broken
set like jigsaws

A reflection of Koi and Hygrophila
A breeze through thin cotton
shirts
A smile, a smile and a hand to hold
As we adventure through this life,
wandering to wander


A moment to hear you breathe
Lungs full and tired
Heart ready to burst
Smoke the last one down to the ****
filter

Unwashed and wild, we ran under street lamps of places
unknown
Unvarnished, the raw stuff below the
grain
Light spills from groups of inky syllables on chest, collar bone,
calf
From the exhale there is rebirth, sacred sterility and latex
lives
I found a place today, not my own, but mine the
same
Saw you there counting the crows and the petals of
dead flowers
Taking the tally between lines on crumpled notebooks,
torn loose leaf
We drank gin till the sun rose, and sighed, slight and
pale against me

Words in the night, distant daytime conversations after the downpour
Smoke exhaled from heavy lungs like the last rain drops
Clouds reanimated in the cloying nicotine
Memories of a smile over kiwis cut crosswise
A bottle holds it all now, those memories
Memories closed and final
Wash the dirt from my hands
With loving pen strokes
Help me make the world fall
Away


Water in the mug, a smile like insects under heel
7 a.m., all alone, empty road, I’ll walk until
I lose my sole
The sun burns luminous
The day breaks lovingly
Fresh brewed love
Drank down like a poison
Spat a poem for you
Broke it all again
And here we sit among the blooming hyacinth
The moths on our skin like the gin we sweated out
In the night over Roman candle illumination
Oh tell me, oh spell me, cover me with your algebra
Little notes on hand or thumb
A loving limb separated with skilled hands
The subtly of your heart
Sewed so skillfully to my dullness
Strong hands have retired to
Holding a basket of bitter apples  

I have found a quiet place to write it all down
A silent place to find the distinctions between sounds
In our absence such life has grown
In our tolerance such symbols have been sketched
I found the gap between the stones
Delved in the depths of a bottle or two
Stacked stones on the shores of empty
Bodies of water

Love sketched out in five
Letters

All the clouds went away today
The sky decided to **** me
Sweat burning, eyes cloudy
Shake the sand from rotten boots
Pick the pebbles from ugly scabs
I clear my throat & fill my lungs
***** my soul with another
tasteless cigarette
This is life & we all want
no part of it anymore