lately i have been asking you how
to start this book
but you told me only i knew

i don't know where to start
the days jumble together like derailed cars
overflowing off of the train tracks

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." - 1 John 4:18

a maladjusted little minstrel, rage focused in the pinnacle
least invincible principle of my environment, so biblical
i'm re-tired of rituals habitual to introducing individuals
like our voices and choices and self-importance, all cyclical
i wonder

does your infallible tongue feel hungry and porous
like your short lived torpid fond memory abhorrence
the inorganic and unfactual that actually came before us
dissident power of your ****** diction in a chorus

coughing on insincerities meant to be favoring,
listen to yourself giving your secrets away, wavering
like a white bible page ripped from the spine of glue on your mouth,
a risky display of leaking doubt, you gave out,
disobeying social conventions and being made prey
******* sick of everything being so **** blasee
you keep forgetting we all rust when it pours this way

you’ve got infectious dictionaries of fiction
fidgeting with the insecurity ignition
telling you what you're missing when you don't stop and listen
and these thesauruses can’t arm you with the proper vowel consonant friction
to out-enamor their derision when you pout as you fit the description,
constricted by eviction, waiting for the jurisdiction
never completely comfortable in someone else's kitchen
something's always a little bit different
they take your bewilderment for ignorance

and hey i wish you would scream and shout
but instead you just keep playing cards now
wish you’d unlock but it stops between your lips slow scowl
swallowing your tongue, the key, he cut out when you kissed
you left it in a public bathroom, it fell into boston's abyss
it's not hateful but afraid, to let it out, ‘kid’
afraid the words would fit like a slit smile on a spit
afraid that they would flow, just ******* like this

an unspoken conviction for viscious fulfillments
and dereliction of indiscriminate sauve depictions of riches
of addictions to ******* philanthropist princesses,
and affinities for infinitely angering insistence
what she represses expected on the table in an instant

you say poet as if it means perfect
when i know enough people with the bruises to show it
to realize it really means nervous
and i have nothing to show you see,
except the mosquiteos who ****** my blood
and would be delighted to tell you
what lovely ugly things they know about me

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." - 1 John 4:18

a maladjusted little minstrel, rage focused in the pinnacle
least invincible principle of my environment, so biblical
i'm ti-red of the rituals habitual to assimilating individuals
like our voices and choices and self-importance, all cyclical

does your infallible tongue feel hungry and porous
like your horrid torpid fond memory abhorrence
the grossly ****** and unnatural discordance
the inorganic and unfactual that came before us
the dissident power of your bodies' diction in a chorus

swear i'm fine, it's just your eyes, inflected with disinfected distance
a forest of imbellished distrust, derealized with disinterest
making me feel like my lungs are full of fumigated insects
and that's fine, i swear, trust me,
i don't need to convince you of this
i don't want to climb into your mouth and wrestle the truth out
i want to go home smelling of wine and pass out on the couch
and your actions are latent, this is stupidly freudian
stop treating me like a ******* patient,
you're supposed to be my friend

coughing up horrible insincerities meant to be favoring
stop and listen to yourself giving your secrets away, wavering
like a white bible page ripped from the spine of glue on your mouth,
you gave in, balancing on the edge of a risky display
disobeying social conventions and being made prey again today

you’ve got dictionaries of fiction fidgeting with the infectious insecurity ignition
stop and listen
and a thesaurus that can’t arm you with the proper vowel consonant friction
to out-enamor their derision when you pout as you fit the description
never feeling completely comfortable in someone else's kitchen
i wish you would scream and shout but you just keep playing cards now
wish you’d unlock but it stops between your lips slow scowl
swallowing your tongue, the key, he cut out when you kissed
not hateful but afraid
afraid to let it out, ‘kid’
afraid the words would fit too much like a slit smile on a spit
afraid they would just flow like this

an unspoken conviction for viscious fulfillments
and dereliction of indiscriminate sauve depictions of riches
of addictions to princesses and affinity for infinitely angering insistence
of what she represses
expected on the table in an instant

the constriction of the snake in her belly
makes ******* and planning things
seem insanely oppressive
she was getting too old for things to be like this
but they all like it that way
this is why she hates yelling and kissing
always the same old
merry go round

you say poet as if it means perfect
when i know enough people with the bruises to show it
to realize it really means nervous
and i have nothing to show see
except the mosquitoes who ****** my blood
and would be delighted to tell you
what ugly things they know about me

liturgies of lethargy
lull their sleepy tongues,
and run among my stumbling dreams
towards the visceral setting sun
keep the soldiers’ safeties off and order no retreat
you can’t afford to chip your teeth for the price of being numb
stay glassy eyed and leave your pride
behind the backs of bus seats
with notes, sharpie, and lies
these men are not what they seem
this world is a messed up dream
while the elite claim to delete the supposed deadbeats
as if they deplete the city’s concrete streets
i want to scream
they’re really the secret
to keeping the working class alive in the heat
to keep the coffee shops open on every street
to keeping the cheap soda purchased
at the indiscreetly laundering cover up convenience stores
you would only see when you’re walking pavement
breathing in the scent of cigarettes and pollen spores

walk into a bookstore where a poetry open mic is going on. the man previously nursing a lager in the back now has all eyes in the room on, flowin to the beat like drums to a song, this is all he has left that doesn't feel wrong.
"these words are all that matters," he says. " ’cept poetry, liquor, and the duality of man, i confess, these pages store my sanity and reveal my real friends, so i'll keep writing until these calluses have bled."

Lately I’ve been talking to Michael Larson in my head
And yeah, I know it’s a little weird to have a real imaginary friend
But we all need someone to turn to when feelin like we’re burning at the stake
To remind we’re still human and there’s no end; ending’s a mindset you create
There’s not really walls to hit unless you tell yourself there is,
just the narrow hallways in your mind where you lose yourself to negatives
See, you can always bend to be more
but you conceive a break, cause breaking is what you do
when you think you can’t create

and if you spend too much time wondering if you’re a particle or a wave
your thoughts manifest into the mental circles you repave
self fulfilling prophecies are subconscious misbehaviors
ignoring synchronicity in the universe’s behavior,
always waiting there for someone else to come along and save ya
caving in you dig a shallow grave, crawl in, and lay there,
blaming everyone else and yet expecting a savior?
from the wayward pain of exacerbating these anticipated cracks,
you still can’t seem to break, just blister and bounce back.
from this controversy in the name of your unsure authenticity
each flaw you extract from your skin is your own vulnerability
the world is not black and white, flat, or statistical see
just rife with impenetrable culpability
so everyone grows up and grows out with restless mentalities
time and age are isolated perceptions of our static reality,
cause we’re changing and flowing together, and we always will be
the only differences between us all are the ones we want to see
to comfort our dogmas and convictions as we atomize our selves obsessively
what matters are the paths we pursue and the wisdom we seek,
not our genetic abnormalities or the ways that we feel we are weak
when everything has innate duality, there’s no good without the bad
good’s an infallible syllable completely unpaletable til you realize bad
can only be in your heart if you perceive that’s what you have

there’s just your belief that you are either trapped or free
and realizing you want what you always had, eternally
if I’m gonna live this life, I will not sit and wait,
I will skin my knees and bleed and then get back up and create
In public Michael Larson’s hanging in my headphones loving the attention that I pay
Telling me earnestly not to worry, cause everyone is a critiqued critic these days
In burn fetish he tells me, “empathy is the poor man’s *******”
And now Krishnamurti is on my other shoulder repeating once again,
That “being well adjusted to a sick society is completely insane, the end.”
everyone gets nervous on the first dinner date, and everyone craves the safety of a friend who has their back
everyone feels like a literary hack the first time they take a paper to their thoughts and attempt to translate them into rap
we all feel a bit misdirected, and a little bit hated, but collective requires an equalibrium of giving and taking
while these days everyone treats each other as if life’s just about getting your own slice of the cake
and blatantly crazed by the toxic disarray
of our modern society transgressing and yet we just stand by and wait

Michael looked shy on camera as he expressed to me that, “what makes us human
Is how we’re a collection of our mistakes and the reactions that we have”
And what makes us individuals isn’t our lifestyle or to whom we pray
The stratosphere here that stops us from cooking to convection
is just a collection of perfections formed from love within the human condition
the gravity that keeps us from falling, is the art that we make
self actualized individuals, not feeling so lonely or crazed,
because paradoxically, art is also how we all relate.

1

decide not to hurt her. but don’t decide to pull her back. if she wants to go she can go. I do not plan on stopping you. it’s not my choice. nonetheless I must warn you; I do not pick up phone calls from numbers I don’t know. if you don’t plan on showing me your scars I don’t plan on showing you mine, I will live inside myself without your help. stop pretending you’re in control.  your presence does not make me a better or worse person.

2

drink beers, sliding your sleeve over the x on your hand. sway like you never stood so still to pretend you were just a charicature so no one caught your scared stench. you **** the stench. you grab it and rip it right out of yourself. **** your rules I will ******* fly, I will ******* dance, I will ******* love. you cannot stop me. you are not my guilt, so stop.

3

look at his eyes as he says it doesn't really matter where you go anymore. safety is not a cold room, an exorcism, or a catechism. mushroom clouds are dancing like rotted sugarplums and fairies with crippled wings in my head. through continuous trial and error life has taught me you can run but you can't hide. don’t take off your coat until you’re two drinks too deep to care if anyone sees the dried blood. laugh at the people who stare, laugh at yourself, laugh at their ******* social rituals. always remember not to let them get you. you are not paying any debts.

4

think about tasting sweat and his pulse. search for it. find none. and you do not require just any pulse. ask him if you are scary, let him touch your open wounds, let him lie and tell you he doesn’t think you’re depressing to be with. even still, you let him win. know that he would gladly take on a less complicated girl. feel like target practice. feel like a faulty product with no receipt. feel like a body, always, you are feeling like a body. it consumes you before you can consume it, filling yourself with holes. This bleeding is further beneath the surface. split skin doesn’t let any more sunshine in. go back to bed sweety. don’t believe in humans. don’t believe in love. they are equally transitory. they are equally fragile. they are equally hungry.

5

think about the fear. think about it. ******* choke on it. do not deny it is there. they never really cared. you don’t really need them to care. So this is what getting older really means. remembering the streets you grew up on before they painted limbs into the pavement. It's hidden in the exhale at the end of the way most people say tired. when what we really mean is, the way things were still lives in my head and i can't deal with the present because it's just a ribbon wrapped around a nuclear bomb. Humming. You tell him you don't think running is worth the effort. He calls you a liar with affection. You are choosing your bus tickets. Like a car driving from a tornado. You just want to see how far you can get. before...