Silence is the beat of a dead man’s heart
Raindrops have never felt colder, at one
in the morning
A cigarette in the thunder and darkness,
destroying me
Satellites rolling from my shoulder blades
down my spine
Transmitting quiet thoughts into my
eyelids
Refracting memories at heartbeats a
second
This ambient sound engulfs
thought
And the pen stroke outruns the
thought
A few brews deep and you’re already thinking of
tomorrow
But those days are beyond your grasp, forget them for
the present
Where the tangible become reality, and reality
becomes livable
Reflecting a thought on the edge of
consciousness
And from our awareness comes
discontent
And the falling, heavy, raindrops, forget
their impact
Shattering like liquid glass on the tongues of
dying men

Doctor
Is there ******* and ****
in summer sausage?

What you want is not always what you need
You get off your pills and forget how to see
Cower and plea, trenches and artillery
We live at home peacefully while we bomb children overseas
Graveyards among trees, flies landing as they please
What types of days are these, falling away it seems
Trying to achieve my dreams, self sabotage by any means
Holding four queens and a two, stinky bag in my shoe
Walking just to get through, get somewhere just to leave again
Spit and spin, coffee and gin, misunderstood original sin
Bent like cheap tin, kicked in, Tsavo lions den dark
Stark remarks, bearing your cleft heart beating red

Washing sand from cuts on my
feet
Wiping grains from the corners of my
eyes
A hundred stones, bouncing together
musically
Tossed back and forth by rushing salt water,
seaweed
I sit here in silence, waiting for the last
puff
Off a cheap cigarette, pulled from cellophane,
cheap wrapping
Adorning your arms with a ball point
pen
A human canvas, framed by smiling green
eyes
And the ocean crashes with tired
repetitiveness
While we are still unaware that we even
exist
Or that we will someday, maybe even today,
cease

TROUBLE * *
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Shaking with hands on wheel, white knuckle
Buckling under, finally feel like giving in
Manic mistakes repeated, sanity retreating suddenly
The fluttering of my heart is familiar by now
Biting lemon faced sour, eyes
showering tears
Trying to avoid my own face, beware all mirrors
Another night of caffeine, capped with handful of pills
The sink water spills down beard, I'm lost, but close
Locked up locust legs screaming, rattling ears to crescendo
Floating around the bend slow, not broken

Static earphones, tired eye dread
a way to find center
putting bullet in head

Black eyed striptease
once a day smoke, please
open your door, freeze

Transit to banishment
planned mass exit
brutal abasement

I saw a way out once where the smudges on the window
were from other noses in the acute psych ward
it was never locked, but I locked myself in
and made up pictures on the ceiling

Two in the hole
fresh rice bowl
here we go

I was tired for a second
slept for two
fine with me
fine with you

Fourscore downtime rhymes
We've heard this **** 10,000 times
A word worth saying for once, lost perception
Of the chambers of the heart correction
Hot peppers on tongue connections, still puddle reflections
The drip-drip-drop staccato beat, of heart of rain
Insane template premeditate the tempo of pierced cortex
The reflex action, muscle contraction, fight
Right overcoming light like eclipse of the sun, one & done
Then plunging into night, moths circling, sun holes
The way a nail goes head deep, pour & seep through the
pores that define the metaphors you apply
the way a nail, crushed by a hammer, pulls free
Free, like I can be, if I simply believe, in self, selfless
the hammer pulls, I have felt less
over this inebriation
But why, why, why this hesitation?
I talk in twisted rhyme, above my station
a reclamation of who I used to be
Be, and I see the exclamation point, peculiar & parallel
Folding space and my perception, to anoint
Lines spit like whole milk, the cut of pine is rougher than snake wood  
Eloquence unravels like old silk, spits cinders and
The sand in our hands counts counter clockwise
We're down the river, deep and twisting,
swatting Horseflies
A toad in his abode snacking on HORSEFLIES, unblinking
predator eyes affixed to the crossed crucifix of
called on cobwebs to untangle thought, lost
a spider with his silk cut, hollow gut
nothing caught today, arachnid love

It's coming now, quickly, in the twilight eyes dialed
Wild, child grown on drip plastic poison
Smoking coffin nails in our boredom
It feels like a kiss every time our sight meets
Fat dying flies speak louder than me, shouting wings
Hope clings to anything with traction in its seams
Blow another gram of the dying American dream

You show me how
loving and gentle
I want to be.

Own slanted hand against me,
eyes tied behind
my back.

I'm so tired
of my own
**** self.

It woke up,
just now,
and it's coming

for you.

Another drunk poem between headphones, static & blank screens
surround me
Awoke in the morning with a gamblers smile, like seagulls flocking,
resting, gliding
Broken, crushed, words like quiet jokes until that last whisper under
***** sheets in a cheap motel
Yet we sip our poison and smoke our cancer, brothers and friends crammed
into closeness
Smiles spent on the eyes of those to lovely to smile back, yet their
hearts were warmed
By gapped tooth grins and young men with dirt under
bitten fingernails
Last night the headlights behind me made silver halos
in the mist
As I walked down gravel roads with mud stuck everywhere, my
constant companion
Some days I forget I’m human, that I exist, sitting in the passenger seat,
watching the world run by
Two kids with backpacks and a stray cat, asked them where they were heading,
“Hitchhiking to nowhere..”
Nowhere sounds about right right now, looking at the
state of things
A place of fragrant trees and uncut grasses, stones unturned and
clear running streams
The broken limestone memories of my childhood call
to me
Not much left of that anymore, just fragments like a
smashed tooth
Can’t even think some days, easier not to I think, easier to let
it all pass by
I saw a darkness today, and I closed my eyes to try for
light
Standing under rusty bridges, flicking dead embers
away
Between blue lines on the page I spill thoughts like
spoilt milk
Scribbles and scratches, wasted and unwanted, lost between
memories
Memories I claim, not sure if they’re even mine
anymore
Twenty two years old with a death wish by thirty
Dots and lines, a splash of smiles and laughter, stains
in the carpet
And we sit here like corpses, the two of us, cigarette butts between
twitching fingers
Stilled by the last exhale, the moment between
inaction and locomotion
Our still waters stirred, clear blue skies filled with rain clouds, still
blue above them
Your room, surrounded by rooms full of people, washing dishes or
watching their dreams die on T.V. screens
None of that matters to me, just your breath and hearing your voice for a second
before sleep takes over
I left a note in that book you told me you’d read, guess you
never got around to it

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

A sentence and a cell,
the American dream of hell,
melted Liberty bell,
getting sick of the smell,
can you tell how long it's been?
do you trust this cage you're in?
do you trust this rage within?
initial impact then spin,
centrifugal friend,
soul bouncing inside cold, dead, skin

Hallway whitenoise, brain toys, medicate me
I need something and soon, strong
Come along, just now, open that can of sardines
It means we don't care, collectively, sublimely apathetic
The rhetoric is twisted, morality misted, disintegrate
Reproach and radiate the poison and that noise and
The boys are calling with rifles and machineguns
Infantry funds, nicotine in stiff lungs
It comes and lunges, for you, it's just how it do
React, snap back, back crack, spinal tap, piano wire wraps noose-like
Fly a high kite, set the bar high and crawl right under
Tear me asunder, lightning, thunder, another monumental blunder

The smoking lamp is out,
get down in your cut holes,
fresh dig,
crushed cig,
ash reduced to stinking cender filter,
wilt her favorite flower behind dusty glass,
flashback flashbang,
blinding myself in my own brokenness,
a toy in pieces on the floor

10AM snack choices
cereal or fruit
milk/juice (if available) / water

2:00 PM Snack Choices
Saltine or graham crackers
Peanut butter

Evening snack choices
1/2 sandwich or popcorn
or
Fruit (if available)
Milk/juice (if available) / water

Creep up with the creek up, stones screaming smooth
Storm letting loose with switch flipping moods
A couple dudes smoking roaches, domino porches
Pour this, in your cup, double up and drop down
Eyesight brown sepia, let me up, ****** lip bite
Skin stretched tight across glaring grins
Last cycle spins out the pins and needles
Devoured by this lonely evil, search turned into retrieval

Sole dead brother, gentle mother in the downstairs at Sequoia
I'll never forget those towering cedar, that curling oak, leaving Graw's knuckles raw on a lawnmower in Homosassa
The peppers are growing out back on Sawyer now and things are getting less rocky
The days are less stocky, less full of lumps, there are still slumps, but we keep moving
The strong stuff is soothing but I'm losing a piece of my soul
at least I don't feel that way with a bowl
A slant of words over fanfiction love and D&D plots
A spilled spot of paint on your eisel, sending words as if by magic spell, fluttering hands
The rhythm in the sand, a cross band of constricting conflicting chaos catastrophes copied
A hot sheet, hot meat, wrapped it, in cellophane, plastic

Whiskey when I'm thirsty, whiskey when I'm dry
Whiskey in the morning, whiskey till I cry
Me and this old whiskey, in the same place by and by
This whiskey cannot hurt me, this whiskey makes me die

Paddle this old river, the banks go sliding by
Polish this old trigger, wipe carbon from your eye
Put down that amber liquor, it's eating your insides
Go and find that river, it is deep and it is wide

Upward drift in the quiet space
Things falling into place for once
What is the capital of your heart
let's travel it
Backstreet mouthwash cobblestone wordlocks
Sterile wipes on your cut hands
Find me out in the rotten Hyacinth
Wash me clean of the metaphors of understanding
I'm a child in the darkness crying out
Ripped from the womb with no say in the matter
Cold blank homogeneous liquid
Dampness constricted and concentrated
Four square corner games in crevices
Ceviche on salty chips in the backroom
The gloom you feel post coitus
Unravel the pieces of seed pod thoughts
Untravel every destination post-partum
Under the bridge drug overdose martyrdom
The forest is burning all around us
                      DRIVE FASTER

Skating down cracked sidewalk waves

Shedding this mind enslaved

Shredding in the name of peace

Inner peace, not some short term lease

The real deal, official seal

Watch me steal away down this sidewalk

Hear my wheels talk under streetlight

Disappear into deep night, no fright

Riding concrete waves out of sight

Knowing this feeling is right

Wrote it down a while back
in the crawlspace
of memory
Woke in a strange place
with blankets of
strange cotton
Winter sheets and tired eyes
the broken space
between a footstep
Play it again in my head
for a while

Spoke for the white sand at midnight
Where I parted ways with all of it
Still remember nothing

Empty places between the graceless days
of blinked pupils
Empty spaces between the gaps in bad
conversation
I looked for you over every shoulder

A tired stare over glasses
into a glass of nothing
raise, sip, repeat
until life
hurts
less

Cold liquor in my gut
Eyes in fennel
Picked all the basil yesterday
Can you make it be?
Once again my love?
I view and a room
And two bodies pushed into
contortions
Souls pushed to edges of drops
Evil to run itself
A soul meant to destroy and
implode

Holding you close in cold wind
The taste of martinis
A bullet in my heart already
When I heard you shiver under thin blankets
My love
Do not suffer
I can not
Sustain it

The pieces of myself
Spread out between two
states
And the blood from
gashes in my feet
In a scarf you still
wear

***** beats, kids barefoot in the street
Running up & down across two yellow lines
In little parks with iron fences, dead grass
Surrounded by broken fences & empty houses
Rotting off their own foundations
Slowly the foundation crumbles,
after the frame is long gone.
Slowly the grass reclaims concrete,
transmutes into soil.
With roots as deep as oily puddles,
runoff after the downpour.
Waste your life in four cornered rooms
Contain your life in ceilings & floors
End your life under cheap sheets
There is a garden out back, full of weeds
Strangling out sunlight with noxious yellow flowers
I've turned over that soil so many times
But only weeds grow

Why do I keep coming to these places?
Attempting to siphon something into this void
Vicarious joy, vicarious hope, still dream of the rope
Can't cope with this anymore, the wound is forever sore
I'm getting sick of trying, lying to myself a bit more
**** your good health, choke on your worthless wealth
Burn down another Newport, the tenth or twelfth

Strong coffee, sticky flowers
Newport hundreds, zig zag power
Stand on the chasms brink, then cower
Wait patiently for horrid pre-appointed hour
Softly disemboweled on this leaning tower of lies
Blind and deaf to choking, hopeless cries
Ten thousand miles of hell as the crow flies
Defeat snuffing out these shining candle eyes
Take pity on the man that tries

My tears bleed into the sea, pleading for foam to take my breath
Sand shifting between knees, I'm so tired, I must simply rest
Remembering the days of new islands and new seas
Watching them appear off port bow, new mountains, new trees
Lee shores and bioluminescent dreams, flicking smoking butts into dark foam unseen
Staring into undulating emptiness off the starboard aft beam

Tumbling and rolling, strutting and strolling
Watching the moon go bowling across the sky
Big dipper wonders why Orion is bending
Wonder what his mother was mending on his cloak
Go for half broke, or just half of that, a casual chat
Fried up pork fat and biscuits, just missed it
This ship is listing, but I'm listening, commissioning blues
Nothing to do, listened to how the grass grew, dared and flew
Always a little to short, change and the sort, burned my last Newport
Watch me sport a smile, strutting and strollin' for another mile

Lilies  bloom in the shade of broken teeth and crooked
smiles
A life spent between blaring plastic
headphones
Smiles like cheap neon and artificial camera
flash
Capturing a moment, destroyed like hummingbird
heartbeats
Synchronized silence worldwide, a breath
exhaled
Musical stones rushing back to oceans
beckoning
Rushing in sand and salt water, forgotten
noise
Her smile broke me
My smile gave the lie away
From the heartburn and ***** came
solitude
Half finished bottles of ***** on the
floor
And smiles exclusive to
inebriation
I dreamed of your touch
But coldness prevailed
I sacrifice my heart to sunflowers
Dead words whispered
Dead words hanging from stalks in the field
Crooked backs and dull tools
Stories of my fathers, and those before
Dead men with echos like
thunder
Crushed aluminum cans on the floor
My secret sickness, a breath of cancer
exhaled
Ashes like snowflakes on my worn
boots
Words like blue tears crumpled on stiff
paper
And we die for our words
And our words will die
with us

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

In the place of no water, birds falling, eyes streaming sand
Dead camel horizons define arid land
The span of one half heart length
The fan blowing half melted ice cubes
The things you can lose, losing your mind
Watch it all unwind, like loose cloth slipping sideways
Heat rays on your back on the blacktop hunting AC
get it up to speed let's live fast
Watch the whole world pass by
They were running, you just woke up, late to the race, already stumbling

Your eyes are on backwards, you're speaking in tongues
Expelling rancid breath from corrupted, rotting lungs
Breaking all the rungs on your plummet down the mineshaft
Rehearse, react, try to quote fact to the faceless
Spaceless outside brain, watching rain stain window
Bend low and embrace me, or mace me, debase me
Give it time and time will erase me, and thee

Tired heart overflowing, brim of pitcher bubbling, red and frothing
I sing out into the night, dark coats of gray and black, screeching white fluorescence taunting
The wrong thing to bottle up, nitroglycerin in your cup, slapped down
You wake up with a frown, chase those pills straight down with sink water
Chemical dependance for sanities sake, my life is a case opportunities not taken
Things falling through my fingers, who else to blame
Make the insiscion, remove my heart, my name, parts of my brain
A crane in shallow water, hunting for trapped fish, it gets drier every day, nowhere to hide from this

Walking in criss crosses down a straight road
Taking time to shrug on another tired load
Shoulders bent, glints of sweat on red brow
Different ways to figure out if you make the cut
Crawling through the sand like a mutt being put down
The sound of trains shunting in the dark
The heat of a spark, individual and searing
We're hearing ourselves for the first time
Turns out it's the worst time, unleashed to unwind
Shooting blind, forgot how to be kind, just pull triggers
It figures, history reflects, war is a word in every dialect

Tattoo my soul on a peach pit
Coffee, sit, Selah, pause and reflect
A new dialect, hearing exchanges
Voices like rain all around me
Together and moving, organic and clueless
Bacteria on the breakroom faucet
Lost somewhere on it, bean crud ruddity, crudity
Crude collapsed faces moaning screams for pocket change
And two **** cigarettes
Hoping for rain just to get wet
Take a bath
This is the aftermath of being continuously alert, no intermission
Space flight gone right, cruise missile slippin
We're tipping towards the edge
A whole species about to end up dead
Replaced
Built them into machines, gave them a face
Creatures of loving grace
Electronic master race

Walking through summer snow, where who knows, wind just blows, on my way
I stray off, run amuck, find myself stuck until tide lifts me, bereft of care
Caught in my own snares, all these **** tires are patched up spares
Movements at night with silence scared, no one dared to ask why, prepare yourself to die
Tears cried over nothing's things, compressed **** between mattress springs
Life wields brutal stings, sharp as coral reef, ****** kicked out teeth
Turning a new leaf on the same old tree, trying to see the same thing differently
Mentally a mess, twenty eight pills from wake to rest, cigarette coffee stress
Looking west, soul undressed and shaking, all the promises end up breaking
Nothing survives its making, everything inevitably shaking to stillness

It was the day before Christmas, all the little cobblers went to work
The day before Christmas and my feet are sore, walking these cold streets alone
I had run over shoes, sores on my feet
This **** street, wind and sin, stinging the tears from eyes like pitchers pouring
The cobblestones hurt my feet, walking barefooted, well hooded now, girls swaying with crockpot hips and blue twine
Little girls with hoods on their jackets.
Smack it, back at it, do it drastic
Fog and dark gray sky, cobblestones made me cry again today
I was in pain, walking in the dark gray shadows

Eight soldiers advancing
Eight white crosses
Eight grieving families
Eight stories, burning the rest of the script
Burning puddles of filth in alleys
Artifical dandelions, splicing toxic yellows into my eyes
Blinking behind the broken glass
Perception reset as the lights blink off

How many individual cups of grief sit on this counter alone 
holding pictures of their sons and daughters
The distant sounds of shelling 
Dreadful walk of a slumbering, evil giant 
drunk and wheeling
A galvanizing hate, one that grinds teeth to gum
drives all tears from their spring eternal
dries one's soul into shriveled reeds 
dry, crumbling thistles

Spin off, be quiet
It's okay, be quiet

We found a place to finally
relax

Away from
them

Thank God they get tired
Thank God they get full
Thank God we can run
Thank God for automatic weapons

Today we found some quiet
Today we found some water
Today was good
Today was fun, killing a few of them, for fun,
you know?

A word that screams, torn
A child that's born, into hunger,
ribs sticking out
Coming from under is a real thing, violence too
How violent would you be if you was hungry too?
Selling our health at a chance at a lie
Credit card bills and new drugs to try
Settling scores with no reason why
Killing eachother over eye for an eye
He's human too, just like you
Think about all the things he went through
How many kids he knew, because we was all once kids too
We spin and we *****, little pieces of it
You come unglued and you spit lemon
This cigarette burns out and you feel the infantry in you
Trained by the government to **** with many tools
We can find peace if we change the way we move
Think about our actions and smile,
let loose
Chase a goose around the park, put the
car in park and walk away
Tomorrow is the start of a brand new day

The night they killed Osama bin Laden,
we drank the bottles down to the shards
We screamed
We pushed all the sand off the third deck
We racked every bolt in our soul
We shed every piece of body armor
We spat into the face of this childhood stupidity
War movies and old men talking
Watching the whole world fall down
Why did I find myself such a fool,
to carry a rifle for nothing

No matter the effort, the end result is determined
Your hair will grow into the ground
Impounded  corpse into claustrophobic confinement
A cacophony of black birds in parking lots, on buzzing wires
A symphony of cicadas subsiding to silence
If love was violence you'd leave me dead and smiling
Worth every last **** cent

Burning down another menthol candle
What vein is better than the throat
Pour your poison into me
Grapple with the loose looted copper of my brain
Burn telegraphed tears into my artifical arteries
Burn your green hexagon in a glass pipe
Watch these clouds speak their native tongue
Blue skies crush you in their tide
Cactus growing out your eyes

I can smell your
krylon nails
Scratching up my side
bugs in nose
Peaches in the
pickle jar
Smoke pouring out
the room
Eyes finding low point
locking on
Lackluster brass fittings
for memories
Fresh cut dandelions
as centerpiece
Creek rolling through
trees
Showing path to
sea

Eyes dilated, pules elevated
Thrush heart killer
brush fire bandit

We speak and steal
little pieces
of the pie

Plastic dumpster flowers
adorn her hair
like lights

Wordcraft woodworks
and a glass
of cold cold
cold water

Pulling out thorns gone soft, near the chainsaw sew up
Blew up my mind, didn't even need a bullet
Then sold it, my soul kid, for pharmaceutical potions
The quote ends to suddenly for me, please see my hesitation
Elation when something works out, second guess my second guesses
Less is more, depending on circumstance
Chlorophyll competing for cramped canopy
Sanity slipping sideways, seductive mania, sirens singing, screaming
Bugs on the wind shield and all you can see is peeled back colors
Shapes that smother your empathy and blind your skull, changes your whole **** outlook

It took me so long to learn that:

Firing takes place
when the recoiling groups
are between .020 to .116
out of battery to prevent
contact between the front
end of the barrel extension
and the trunnion block

Verbatim.

But I did it, and so can you.
Why not?

It took me so long to learn:

The distance between
the face of the bolt
and the base of the cartridge
when fully seated in the chamber

Verbatim.

But I did it, and so can you.
Why not?

Plunging, direct,
enfilade, traversing,
elevating,
elevating and traversing,
swinging traverse, free gun, bipods,
tripods,
useless weight which
spits the ending of living stories
and breathing saints