i still have not stumbled into strength
i have tripped and fallen
and hit my head on it
a few times

but i still have not drank
from the cup of the powerful
pervaded by wasted persuasion and doubt full
security in vacillating hours of uncertainty
turning eyes away from the ******
of crows in the front yard

sore stomach, gutter bored
tired of listening to concerns
about the unimportant things
while winter worms it's way in
to the earth singing suffering
while ice meteors fall from storm clouds
in ohio

i wonder where they come from
and all you really want to know
is what i think about
what you are thinking about
and i wonder if you have ever wondered
what i was thinking about
but i do not make hopeful bets
on boys who live in cities
and do not think
about storm clouds in ohio

finally started the novel he told me to write 3 years ago that i never wrote because i was too busy being depressed and wasting my potential over him which he would’ve never wanted. for maza, for you, sincerely liv tyler and lacey chabert’s love child

*pre:

right now, we’re floating in space, and i can’t think of anything. no that’s a lie, i conjugate things in negative too much. we’re floating in space, and i can think of everything, our bodies are pulling us like taffy in a loop-de-loop like kansas tornadoes and like cotton candy makers and wheels spinning across invisible pavement.

but i wonder if it is pavement? eventually there must be pavement. that makes sense, right? when you’re falling, eventually, you’ll hit the ground, right? that’s life. that’s reality. i say these things to you so much. and you look at me with that face. you don’t have to say anything. your slightly open mouth is reality. your lip biting is reality. your hands, so i hold on to them and pretend we’re padlocked together and nothing could ever break our hands from one another because you’re all i know right now. you’re all that’s real. i’m so scared of what reality will be when you’re not here. what is any of this, without your hands?

and now, we’re just freestyling in nothing, an out of control merry-go-round accident machine malfunction explosion fwoosh. i’m dead and i’m still waiting to gag on cold metal splitting bone. reality. reality, right? suddenly the hard seering pain seems so appealing. i turn my head to look at you and it feels slow motion executed too quickly, snapped neck swung sideways like a dog desperately shaking off it’s fleas, i know your eyes are on the other side of this so i keep pushing for seconds and hours to turn against gravity and look at you.

except your hands, i don’t know where they went. i thought they were there a minute ago, in mine. i saw them. i swear, they were warm like beds. i lay my palms in them and you held on so tightly that i’m sure you weren’t part of the decision making process in this ‘letting go’ thing. letting go, did you let go? did you free your hands from me? did i hold on too tight? was our velocity not enough? my weight was so feeble i couldn’t manage to hold you down from being ****** into the void?

my brain is still trying to put the calculations together. when did you let go? where did you go? i try to imagine you spinning besides me still but everything is empty. we have no momentum. the darkness is arid, quiet. i feel like a shell. i wish there was a shore for me to break against. i want to call your name but i know it’ll be crushed out of my mouth if i try to speak, so i clamp my teeth together and grab my body, and spin, spin, spin. alone. i can’t cry. the tears would creep into my eyelashes and float into the sky. is there any sky? is there anything at all?

i keep denying. i argue with the world, stiff bodied and silent. everything seems like so much for one person to take on. i’m not good at remembering i am being, i am a being. as in i am being right here, right now. everything. nothing. where did your hands go? reality: the wind whapping the screen windows, hissing in the drain pipe. reality. cold, i say. too cold, my body says. cold like a brain freeze. no, it’s not too cold, i insist again. it’s crackly and comes in bursts of shivering down your spine. that’s what it is. yes. just a slight shivering. no, my mind says, chilling. and i tell myself, it would be the wrong thing to do, to embrace that darkness, right? right? and no one will answer me.

i try to scream and my lungs are filled with the yawning roiling nothing, like salt water washing into my mouth. i choke on the feeling and remember telling you that story about sounding like a strangled chicken when i try to roll my r’s in spanish class. you laugh somewhere and i scream again. it feels good, choking. choking yourself to…nothing. there’s so much everything pent up in that sound forcing itself out of my windpipes. and the earth does not rumble beneath; the silence says you belong to me. humming it over and over, pulling. you belong to nothing. you belong with nothing you belong as nothing. i can’t fathom this kind of anti-gravity. i thought we had everything. was i wrong? i don’t feel like everything, right now. i don’t feel anything.

so, i ask the darkness, this is it? the echo is swallowed. i can’t even hear my own voice. is this it? is this everything? i clamp onto my upper arms, squeezing the muscles tense. keep spinning. keep spinning. don’t speak or it will swallow you. keep spinning. there is no meaning. i don’t know why you let go. does it matter now? spinning. real. what is that? spinning.

you never fully unpacked your clothes
the whole time you live in there

and now i know things that make my mind bulge
feeling like whenever i come back to reality
it's too vivid through my eyes
and that's why i never noticed that you hadn't
until someone mentioned it
too much for my stomach
it turns so easily

it's amazing what the human brain can prevent, form getting in
if you really try, if you fight for it
i'm sorry i'm so frightened
or i'd send this in a letter
but i know that they'd derhyme it
and figure out
we all love you, and you love us
and we love heaven, and heaven loves you

they've had us chasing death for so long
extinction for redemption as if that makes any sense
heaven is freedom, heaven is your eyes when the stars are out
heaven is all the battle scars on your worn hands because
you survived and today's breath is sweeter to your lungs
than any breath before, because unlike you, it has forgotten all of them
it just follows your patterns and hopes that you love it
you love it, the circuits do you remember how they
widened your eyes, the branches of trees can be limbs chopped off
but remember you told me, and i know it to be true;
they always grow back. they always grow back.
you will grow back. don't fall so fast that you can't catch you in a year or two
you are your worst enemy and your best friend
and you know better than anyone how to be your own best friend
your inner child is safe in this letter
your inner child is stamped into the fabric of my mind like a siren of eyes
your inner child is deep below the concrete floor,
incubating inside the earth with your name
don't let them take your name, god why don't i have the guts to send you this letter
i guess i'm afraid you'll never get it
i wish that i could help you, i know you're not crazy
and you, last month, i know you're not crazy
and you, last year, i know you're not crazy
and you, still on the inside, i know that it's scary
you know everything that i want to tell you already
in your gut, in your instinct of instincts, it's just being barred
your eyes are not black, they are shadowed
but i still see a gleaming inside you
a glow that snaps it's neck back into place
when no one's listening
this world is such a distressing illusion
and yet look at me afraid of becoming
if i speak clearly enough to be felt i guess that's all i can offer
i'm trying,
i don't want to die
you are hearing things, and they're not in your mind
this world is hazy now,
it's hard to believe, but don't fall just yet,
create your own vibrational frequency
they know us well. you are worthy of respect
you are worthy of love, happiness, kindness
you are everything and everything is you
and we can't lose something so precious

it's so strange how fear strikes
gently at first, like morphine
it dribbles through you, you bottom out.

and then when you are dry and cracked
it soaks into you like gasoline to driftwood
the sound of the birds become dull
and then you panic about your panic
because the birds see everything and you need them
when the wild beasts come
need them to listen, so you can sit still and hum--mmmmmm
dear forest, can you block the taste out of my mouth
block the sound of talk radio voices whirring through the channels
pineal staticky as a black hole, so you say
vacuum packed emotions cemented in nothing
compressed trash dumped into the same landfill
and suddenly your cup runeth over with the poisoned caviar
and you ignored that ******* caveat when you were young
the bed you make you lay in it, you dug your grave and then fought them
all the way in, i guess that deserves another personality pathology

words and pictures and angels that george carlin doesn't believe in
but i don't mind i still mostly agree with him
except quietly poking that thought to the back of my mind
to recirculate and well i don't want to forget it in too much time
but angels, there are some things you can't describe to people
that eventually make sense, and some that make you stop
before you start because, you have to see quezacoatl to believe it
and i understood after all those nights of john darnielle
soft voice meant to carry, snakes, destruction, and ripe plums

there are some little devils and some little angels
they don't need a medium, just an invitation
a little thought, blind intention, unconscious manifestation
and only then can they live
hocus pocus **** whatever,
illuminati is distraction,
these aren't legends they are presently presence
essence and breathlessness and aristocrat embezzlement
i'm not worried about the devil
i'm worried about the people who crouch to his level
leveraging him on their shoulders
parasitic loaner, bankers thirsty to sell us
everyone's just looking at miley cyrus
welcome to america, this is a ******* mess
i might overnight some toy blocks by UPS to congress
if they learn to count 1 2 3 but in millions
perhaps it'll dawn on them how much ******* debt we're in

so some nights i let the crackle overwhelm
and sink into the consciousness
and let the shadows prowl around
because pajama sam keeps demanding
not to be afraid of the dark now, for my art, for my heart
there's a world in there and sometimes you have to fall
to know what's life when you come up for air and see
this show is so debonair i can barely bare to read the latest
it's all so plasmatic, phlegm and smoke and paper
burning cities, smoke and mirrors, moving more paper
the only way to act outside the script is to stop acting
and it's the roughest road to choose
but it'll be worth it when you can actually rest in peace without dues
reality isn't real is it, blue collar is another word for slave isn't it
9 - 5 is another expression for consume, a check goes in a box
but we assume it's fair work for pay
we are each a stock, worth about as much as a tea bag
to a party of executives in hot water

and the man outside keeps screaming
something evil is hidden in the depths of the news page
slipping through slack fingered open mouthed people
somehow we're still clueless in the information age
we see it, we read it, we feel it, helpless
we sit in our desk chairs and wonder what next
and the devil sits in our ears whispering don't worry
i know what you're expecting of me
i'm coming, if that is what you all collectively believe

i turn to quezacoatl and all he will murmur
is
what are you going to do about it
the collective has power
waiting for a fateful hour like
a wave puffing up it's chest
oppressed does not mean suppressed
and politics are liar language
money is bluffing to keep us thinking we're nothing
once you've seen what hides in the dark
the light glows brighter in comparison
keeps you safe in the early hours of morning
when you listen

we are the change
we are absolutely everything

i see dead things, they coat the insides of my lungs
the scent of roadkill stings my eyes
the sight of mangled twisted carcass
saps the sadness from my gums
i see things in a red tinge, ever since i began to
absorb the fringes of weeping trees,
and stories of all the things i feared knowing
all scarlet letters that look apple-sweet
and hues of unhinged cringesom nights spent in the bath pooling
forties and bad memories and them stitched in the back seat,
sidewalks singed with a strange bitter heat speckled with white lies
while bruised fruits are dancing 4/4 measures on my concrete cheeks
grass curled, fists rustily sprung, wounds wound tight, see
my heart is beating 3/4ths of the time, waltzing meaty and slowcooked
falling from the bones, down to the knees
clinging to the ground with all my might, i thought of her
taking a lighter to the split ends of her hair in the bathroom
i didn't move, so as not to drag the blood through the streets
i will not let you see, i will not let them see
but there are never any band aids when i need them
and i wear my feelings on my sleeve and you read them
keep up a finicky fight with a world i don't believe in
i wish i knew exactly why we're fighting to begin with
you swallowed whole and chewed on the bones
and i'm getting ******* so i want to know
if you can just be ******* happy now
everything is slimy and porous and tinged with copper tones of terrible
how can anyone be easy to love and why is love so angry when no one is

i always fidget with my itches
then itch raw with each digit
of the rigid way we squirm with
words we feel to be explicit

but rearranged we're indifferent
without the frame we're elicit
no stopping shame that exhibits
the way your brain always listens

even in pain it's persistent
you can't prohibit the accident
of unwitting existence
don't say sorry to the superstitious fiction
stay judicious

just ease your mind with the lyrics
and grind the grass to find distance
don't mind, the path meets resistance
the system we're in's nonexistant
i'll build a fire ladder for each fallacy
and scale every rhythm

just cleaning out all desire
mind going off like a piston
mankind don't need this fine attire
but the dior keeps us christian
not built to feed to designers
only a liar does glisten
yet we find ourselves requiring
our own kind of inquisitions

in addiction and prison
a shiny label don't listen
so without your permission
i'll find my own set of prescriptions

1.

we all know versions
of people
we all know blips-
flickering tv screens
with constantly changing channels
on to the next, one after another
maybe this show will feel right
maybe this genre will fit

unsatisfied by the plot
in this episode
unfamiliar with the characters
on the screen
the lighting in this room isn't
quite right
eyes flickering in candlelight
skipping over the horror channel
very quickly
trying to move on to the love scene

2.

you talk about my body
like it is a puzzle we have to finish
i'm waiting for you to realize
it is actually a dress that
will never fit anyone

but being a puzzle gives me
some time, so i let you
piece together the edges
you create a faceless outline and
call it a beautiful frame
for a piece of art you
don't quite understand

3.

but i will never be the basillica
and i am not an augustine
it's impossible to drink
the wine from my insides
without being poisoned by it's strength
we have been fermenting for a long time

and the bread does not break because
it had already been broken
into too many small crumbs
i wonder if you're still hungry

4.

and i think about our houses
both scattered with wooden bits
of the eiffel tower and taj mahal
big ben in the bureau by the wall
the colosseum in the middle
of the kitchen table
sydney opera house suspended
from the ceiling of the bedroom

monuments to so many bodies
we sure like putting them together
but it's hard to find storage space
when you're done

5.

you take pictures to remember
how proud you once were
or sometimes just to seal them in a frame
frozen in time so that the next time
you see them standing in the doorway
like a degenerate masterpiece
you can touch the photograph in your wallet