twenty four
days
since thoughts met
action
met data
met words
and I don't know
how or why I ever stopped writing.

I sometimes catch
my eyes and mind
latching onto the
Autumn leaves
all bathed in the
inherent frailty of
change between
life and death
and I remember how
beautifully you crumbled
like a forgotten statue
of a forgotten temple
with only rubble
and dead leaves
crunching underfoot
as reminders of what was.

There's too much
noise sometimes
and all I can think
about is my friends
rambling in corners
scrawling Confucius
across Facebook walls
trying only to be heard
and taken seriously
through the wisdom
of people long dead
in lieu of facing the
instant rejection of
developing a unique
personality in a sea
of cynical personas
where it's better to
have never loved
than to admit that
you are human.

Human beings
being human
always looking
with despair at
the sheen
from which they
stumbled
always swearing to be better
than the previous people
as a means of rebellion
against existence itself

Is it really any
surprise
that I write my
best poetry
when I'm
writing about
you?

Fool me once
Shame on me
Fool me twice
And leave me with scars
forever unhealed

I get so anxious
when I get nosebleeds
the red dripping
sounds of thunder
against the porcelain
sink where
water waits to take
that part of me to
an unseen place
because blood
out of context
is something to fear
and must be washed away
and with prayer it is welcome
and they all commune
but here I stand hoping
that the flow will stop
long enough for me
to stop making a scene
in this Chinese restaurant
and I can get back to something
more important than
some mild bloodflow

"I've got a good one
working
my dear,"
I said a bit louder
than a whisper,
"I can feel it rolling around
in there."
"A poem?" She asked
and it was beautiful
and it was perfect
and then the poem was
gone.
and I couldn't find the words
so I looked around the library
to see what words would
spark
and the sign on the copier
bellowed
NO PENNIES!!!!!
which is fun for a title
and a sign on the wall
wanted to introduce me
to Muslims on the 26th
but at the end of it all
I was surrounded by endless words
while at a loss
for my own.

My words feel
bloated again
and Regina Spektor
is on the TV singing
about love and heartbreak
better than I ever could
and I have no piano
accompaniment
to make this hurt
seem somehow romantic
and somehow beautiful
instead of the
ugly rasping
that has rubbed my
thoughts raw
with memories
of lost times
and fantasies
of reconnecting
and it hurts
extra to realize
that of all these
people
these best friends
and loved ones
lost to time and circumstance
I realize that
there's not
a **** thing
that I want to talk
to them about
and if we're being honest
here
because poets are always
honest
I miss the idea
of these people
but not the people
themselves.

We continue to act as though
we humans were the first to
discover the beauty
of nature
and that the birds
haven't been singing
about it since the
first little Finch
chirped and created
music as we know it

I seem to have
lost
form and structure
and spark
and fire
and the words
won't come when
I call

Is this what it's
like to be alone?
To be without?

Where are the words
when I need them most?

They told me
to think more
positive thoughts
so I described the
movement from
a perfectly good day
to a severe depressive
low was as exhilarating
as being on an
out of control tire swing
attached to a tree that
was half dead
and they told me I needed
to take it more seriously
or leave.

Prince charming
is a wastrel
living off of
bummed cigarettes
and on
borrowed couches,
forever unwanted,
terminally free
and he's searching
for his Princess
hidden under the beds
and needles
but how does one fight
a dragon when the
dragon is trapped inside your
ribs
and so
and so
and so our prince's sword
and our prince's heart meet
in an embrace that puts the
love
he has for the princess
to shame.

I've walked by that
park
once in the last
four years
baseball speckled
and bloodied concrete
visible only to those
who lived it
and I can't help but
think of how the world
is awash in great strokes
from the mental paintbrushes
we all wield
in trying to make sense of
our own existences
and I won't ever see
the glory in what you see
but I won't ever try to peel
away those layers of paint either
as we need the artistry of
our nostalgia to cover all the
chips and scuffs that appear
when you're not looking

New Year's Eve,
two breakups,
four deaths,
all within five months
and the depression
had taken a firm hold.
I sat hunched over
a computer spending
virtual time
at a virtual party
with strangers online
and he messaged me.
An ex of an ex,
is that how it goes?
he said he was sorry
for being rude before
and that he was upset
that she had taken me
to the same place she
had taken him on their first
date.
I told him I was sorry
for being rude
and that she had left me
because
"she didn't want the
responsibility of a relationship
anymore"
and he said that's what
she had told him
when she broke up with him
and we both shared a bittersweet
laugh
and parted ways,
a little less fractured than before.

They say you
can't
truly know somebody
until you
see them
hurt
so I write
these words
and peddle emotional
****
for the lonely ones I'll
never meet
in an effort to
better get to
know myself

The hardest part
about living through
trauma
is when someone wants to
claim you
and use your suffering as
a badge of honor in that
they helped you get to a better
place and time in your life
but all you can hear is how
they introduce you to others
and leave all of your trauma
attached to your identity
instead of in the past where
it would die
and you know,
maybe this has a negative effect sometimes
like,
say,
for example,
a third grade boy introducing himself
to his teacher and immediately
explaining the sad tale of abuse and
people gone astray
because up to that point all he had
known was how to be injured,
how to be a trophy
for mother dearest
after all,
there can be no heroes
without victims
and some heroes find it better
to just keep a victim around to
be brought out and dance
to the same sad song
of the evil that men do.

I am aware
that I sometimes
write rambling
senseless
words with strange
spacing and indentation
and it's overall not very
good poetry
but it's a really
good way of cataloging
the thoughts that flutter in for a
moment or two like:

Whatever happened to
Emilio Estevez?

I could Google it, but I'm happier with
the mystery.

Its quiet on the lake
at almost one
in the morning
where the sway of the trees
in front of the stationary lights of
the island themed bar
across the way
gives the impression of endless dancing
despite the bar nearing
closing time
and the guests yell a little less loudly
out of respect for the night sky
where I find myself staring at the stars
instead of the bobbers in the water
because
even though fishing is great,
there's always
something better to catch
out there in the cosmos

My father
my hero
has crumbled to dust
and I really just
don't feel like vacuuming
tonight

how inconvenient, indeed

He's making
a list
he's checking
it twice
he's here to tell you
that Bud Light tastes
best when served over
ice

Merry Christmas®

santa has been
hired by the NSA
and [insert threat here]
is on the naughty list
this year so
you'd better keep your
nose to the Good Book
or else santas elves
are going to have to
enforce martial law
on you and your little
protesting buddies
for resisting the
american dream

all
Coca-Cola Red
Lily-White
and
Bud Light Blue

When you told me about
how you had hit a low
and a Gorillaz song
led to you taking the
blade
to your skin
I remember hitting you
because I felt betrayed that
you were self destructing
faster than I was
and I didn't want to be left
alone
burning out in the sky,
a novel constellation
for people who always had it better
to look upon
and cheer

I can't stop thinking
about a stranger
from my graduating class
who killed himself a while back
and how he was a quiet type
and had a cloud of hateful rumors floating
around him at all times and
a few years back he took a shotgun
and you know the rest
and all I can think about is how
there are a thousand people
on his memorial page on Facebook
all reminiscing about their time
with the boy they ignored
but all really cared about
deep down
and it makes me afraid of death
because I don't want to be remembered
on some page that gets filed away
with all the other pages and groups
and noise
about buy/sell/trade
and swap meets
and the latest crazy wrap thing.

Write your poetry
like accusations for
crimes never committed
against the love you hold
dearly in your heart
better than anyone has ever held
you in loving arms
and write your poetry
like bottled messages
floating adrift in the endless sea
we call loneliness
and hope that you may bump into
someone out there
even if it breaks the glass and you both
sink
you won't be alone
and write your poetry
like some vigilante cowboy
from days past
and treat each letter
each word
each line
like a bullet that will
always meet its mark
and save the day
so that we can all ride into the sunset
happy and free

at least
until someone changes the channel

I appreciate the
fact that
I'm able to stand on
the corner here
and *****
and *****
and moan
and complain
and it's being
accepted as
poetry

Death my darling
I keep writing you
because I'm finding it
harder
and harder
to talk
to people
and not feel
empty

I have a tremendously
cinematic memory
all sepia-toned
and the good moments
are surrounded
in perfect lighting
and orchestral swells
and the bad moments
are filled with endless
drum beats
and I imagine one of my
mothers as Judy Garland
and my father as Ernest Hemingway
and it makes it just
a little bit easier
to understand how
they were so consumed
by their ambitions and
their self-destructive
tendencies

sand
silt
clay
water
sunlight
sunlight
sunlight
oh lord
how I miss your light
and my back aches
as it stretches from
horizon to horizon
as I watch the day
and among the elite
the sunflowers
the zinnias
and the forgotten
I root deeper and deeper
because warmth is found within
this world
within ourselves
and some of us have lost that knowledge
that growth

"she looks like she's got her life together"

"I think he wants to fail me"

"I haven't studied for a test since middle school"

"I don't love him like that but he's nice to keep around"

"Well she got what she deserved"

and so on
and so on
and so on
ad nauseam

There's more
static in the air than
usual
and the faintest
signal is trying to
get through
to our novelty Garfield radio
but I'm not sure you want
to hear it
or if we're just gonna
watch TV instead

Cigarettes
and
cat ****.
Those are the smells
that remind me of you.
You had a tendency
to call the women
I cared about in my
life
******. (Capital W)
My mother,
My fiance,
My sisters,
and where does
this leave you?
Sitting as a bombed
out husk of masculinity,
a fluid ever-changing
identity.
I remember you when
you were a goofy nerd.
Now you are a Rebel (Capital R)
waiting patiently for the
antebellum south
to rise again.
I try not to look back in
your direction.

I have risen.
I have moved on.

I don't even own
a wall clock
yet I keep hearing a persistent
tick-tock tick-tock tonight.
Maybe it's because it's one thirty
in the morning and I should be asleep
but instead I'm writing poetry
to relax and take my mind off of things
with the added benefit of validation from strangers
who think that my words are pleasant to read
even though my poetry feels like a big run-on sentence
to me and all of these poems are a part
of a larger, more coherent
narrative but all I can do
is amputate and crop
here and there
and break the hands off of the wall
clock that I don't own
in the hopes that for
an unmeasured moment,
my mind will be clear from all
the white noise
that tick tick ticks
away,
hurtling at
one second per second
into infinity.

Some things in my life
will never be transferred
to poetry
because they were
only pain
and nothing more.

This summer vacation
I chose to write poetry
and someone told me
that I'm not the worst
at it because I am a human
and not a Vogon
and I spent my time standing
on a digital street corner
shouting my threnodies
into the digital white sky
to join the cacophony of
suffering
and healing
and dwelling
and moving on
and of love and hate
and how
the thought of you keeps us up so
god ****** late
that we forgot to set an alarm
and were late to work for the second
time in four years
but in the darkness we
are huddled
bleeding binary
into words of hope.
Rise, rise
and shine
better than the sun ever could.

It's a marvel
how often we'll
choose to share a
drink with
the devil himself
in lieu
of drinking
alone

Why is it that
we romanticize
self-destruction
and buy so heavily
into the archetype
of
tortured artist
tortured soul
and since when did suffering
start to be used
as validation
and survival
and resilience
ignored
as we try to
collect and count
our scars,
only trading them
when something is
to be gained

Some fool once
suggested
that I start to
carry around a
little notebook
to write my poetry
in whenever
inspiration strikes.

I'd rather not live like
a
caricature
all scribbling melodrama
in the corner of darkened
bars and seemingly
unable to work out the mystery
of women
and exuding an infinite
aura of depth
to draw
the eyes of strangers on
a passenger train
as I ride from mystery
to mystery

the fact of the matter is that
there are
no ******* trains
in this town and
there are no picturesque
vistas with which to fall in
love
but rather an endless
array of fast-food
joints
and thinly disguised
bigotry
and the neon red, white and blue
gets nauseating after a while

truth be told
I had a notebook
once
and a stranger came up
to me and asked me what
I was writing
and I said "poetry"
and he laughed
and sneered
and said
"oh, SOMEBODY is getting cultured!"
and I learned at that point
that more often than not
"nothing" is a good answer
for strangers and that
my poetry is better kept
in my head until it is time
to type it all out
because writing poetry is not
a spectator sport for me

my poetry is a *****
little secret between
myself
and the few who care and
my thoughts are not a persona
I am not a performer for strangers
in an endless act of
"more cultured than thou"
I write for me
and
notebook or no

I am a god ****** poet.

She liked to
decorate with
makeshift gravestones
and shrines
for those around her
who had died
but still walked
the earth
unaware

The blood in my veins
is as frozen as the
sap in the trees and I can't
come up with a better
analogy because my
head hurts from it
being so **** cold out
and I get depressed
when I see pictures of
lush
green
landscapes and
I dream about the warmth
of the sun
because there's nothing
green around here
other than the green
I spend trying to keep
myself from dying of frostbite

and yet

there's always a guy
walking around in shorts
and a tank top

I thought about you
again today as I drove
past that one street sign
that says
"Victoria Road"
and I've always wanted to
steal
that for you
and I don't know why
and today I nearly did
but that's probably because I had
a little too much of this nice Merlot
(with lots of oak notes, or so the label tells me)
while celebrating a grandparent's 80th birthday
and I just thought I'd let you know you crossed
my mind today
before I go try and sleep off the wine buzz
before work this evening

One hundred poems
one hundred fractured thoughts
spawned by less than one hundred heartbreaks
but I suppose a city hit by a magnitude 8
earthquake
is worse off than one hit by one hundred
at the level of magnitude 2.

One hundred poems
one hundred running narratives
all telling a story that's some truth
some lie
and a whole lot of pain.

One hundred poems
and someday I'll be one hundred years old
and tell a story to a stranger on a park
bench in which I describe how writing
can help the soul mend itself.

A lot of poetry
comes to me while I'm
driving
because theres
an awful lot to take in
on the road.
Like the woman in the
minivan who came tearing up
out of the ether like Death himself
only to cut me off
and I couldn't even be mad
about it because
She had a life sized rabbit
stuffed animal collection
on her dash board
and before I could even guess
where she got them,
there's a guy leaning out of his
truck flipping off another person who
is texting while driving
and I think back to what a pastor
told me:
"If you want to see an example
of original sin, just go drive on the freeway"
But to me,
freeway driving
is just high speed poetry
waiting to happen.

She's the kind of
woman who never
messages first,
wading through
endless attempts at contact
all left as "read"
and yet a line of
baggage holding hopefuls
wait to be used
as toys
for her ego

She and I
are in two
very different
holding patterns of existence.

Yet the very thought of her
sets electricity coursing
through my brain.

A wildfire
in the backdrop
as I tell her
I love her.

I remember this
time I was walking
down a hallway during
my schooldays
and fumbling with
what was currency
among students
--chewing gum
and I had paid
a dollar fifty
for this pack of cinnamon
gum
so when a person
with whom I’d spoken
twice
came up to me and said
“yo, zach, gimme some
of that gum”
I said
“Hell no.”
and he asked why.
“Because I don’t like you!”
and the collective shouts
of ooh’s and ****’s
made me feel as though
I had done something
both great and bad
and the reality was I didn’t mind
the guy at all I just didn’t want
to continue having the discussion
but I wondered if I hurt his feelings
and if the cinnamon gum was worth
the endless re-tellings of me being rude
to a perfect stranger
and a little part of my
soul crumbled that day
all cinnamon and fresh

I wore tie dye
to the funeral
because it was what
your family requested
and a sibling of mine cried
to me later about how
she felt out of place
with all the misfits
in tie dye
and her in her
impossibly chic
getup with all her
friends
as though a funeral
is the place to make
a fashion statement

Sorry about your loss!
#newme
#sensitive

As though she'd been
inconvenienced
by the family's preferences
to remember their daughter
by her favorite patterns
and funerals were really just
events you could save
imaginary tickets from
and frame them in a beautiful collage
next to all your beautiful outfits
and memories of how you and
your friends got dressed up
so nice
and looked out of place
at a funeral
where you didn't give
a **** about the
person who
had
died

He wasn't much
to look at
all raging
against mediocrity
trying to make sense
of the hurts in the world
by seeing how much
pain he could tolerate
and how many others
could bear
that pain with him

"Kiss me, Judas,
for I do not wish
to be alone"

the Dramamine
won't stop the vertigo
when one is floating
to this heaven
where someone must've
left the thermostat up
because it's a touch
warmer than usual
around these parts

Tired again
perhaps depressed
or maybe just bummed
but I can't really tell
as I walk through this haze from
one dream
to
the next
and people are
starting to blur
and are as
melodramatic as
ever and
really I
just need a bit
of sleep
so that I can shake off
a bit of the dust that has
accumulate in my
eyes from being
awake all too
much

I tend to stay
away from gods
and goddesses
because if there's anything
I've learned from
ancient texts,
it's that gods and goddesses
tend to leave piles
of bodies strewn
in their wake.