There's a faint
tingling in my
fingers today
and my doctor
who I never visit
says I should lay off the
caffeine
but my fingers are tingling
in beat with the piano
playing in the room
below me
with only my breath as
accompaniment to
the melodies
and all I leave are clouds
of condensation in the air
as evidence of collaboration
where for a moment
I didn't feel so
disconnected

I was in a 50's style
ice cream joint
waiting on some Blue Moon
and I was staring at the checkered
floor
feeling nauseous from the pattern
and a couple came in behind me
who were more vivid than
any people I could ever make up

the wife said
"Dale, I got my own wallet, Dale."
and they ordered malts and I wondered
how many malts one could drink in a lifetime
and that my Blue Moon was taking a long time
but the lady turned to me and said
"i love your sweater so much it makes me sick"
and I said
"Thanks"
and she says
"If I were your size, I would knock you down
and try to steal it from you"
and we all laughed
in the beautiful
chrome ensconced ice-cream joint
before I took my Blue Moon
and wandered out back onto the street
of an old railroad town
with nothing else
to offer
other than reality

leave, leave
won't you?
now that the air is getting
chilly again and the bite
of winter is coming hard
leave, leave
with the changing trees
as there is no space in this
cooled off utopia
for the bitter flames of
hated
you hold so near to your soul
in lieu
of an actual identity.

A friend of mine
died some years back
while trying to do a U-turn
and I found out secondhand
through gossip
"Did you hear that she died?"
"Why is everyone saying RIP
about her on Facebook, what happened?"
and I will never forget the smirk
that you had when you told me.
Was it the juicy gossip that had you excited?
Was it the exposure to death?
All you had to say to me in the aftermath
was
"Oh I heard there were drugs in her system"
as you mimed out the action
of smoking a joint
as though being high
and wanting to dull your senses
for pleasure
meant that the accident
was somehow deserved
as punishment from above
and I'm not sure about heaven
but I know Hell was living with you.

I couldn't even cry at her funeral
because you were there.
I cried for her when another friend
died three weeks later.

The best I can do
is give you advice
that I should've followed
so that I don't have to see
you get hurt in that way
because it's easier to dig
a moat around your castle
than it is to build a new castle
out of the bombed out fragments
of an acropolis devoted to the
concept of what she could've been.

All I can do is
say the words
over and over
again to show
that the power
to keep fighting
is in me and
burning enough
to keep me warm
in this frozen world

I gave up once
and nothing changed
the world kept turning
the hyenas kept laughing
the buzzards kept feasting
the sun kept shining
and nothing was undone
so I changed myself
and
the world kept turning
the hyenas kept laughing
the buzzards kept feasting
the sun kept shining
and I kept living
which isn't too bad.

"it's probably for the best"
the old woman had whispered
to her
after
she miscarried what could
have been my older sister or brother
and the list of unnamed secrets
grew

It's like a thunderstorm
hidden behind your
eyes
ready to strike
and send lightning
streaking across the subconscious
like branches and roots
of a poisoned vine
strangling what gardens
of joy used to grow there
leaving only bitter thorns
and the vague idea of
a beauty that has the potential
to exist where only blackened
skies roam

I feel neither
here
nor there
but rather
stuck in the
in-between
of certainty
and infinite possibility
only clinging
to the vague
notions of human nature
for comfort

I'm stuck
in a perpetual loop
of longing for something
that I don't know
how to explain
but it comes out when
I listen to all-female
pop rock bands
and I want to be anywhere
but here

I have been so busy
with other things
that I've just been
scrawling poetry
across whatever surface
will hold my words
my favorite medium
being McDonald's napkins
so now I have a ton of poetry
I can't seem to find because
I tuck it away between my notes
when I actually have to pay attention
in class

perhaps I'm getting worse
or maybe better
I can't seem to tell most days
where my mind is
and some days i feel alone
in the universe and
am terrified that a breeze
with scatter my atoms among
the cosmos
and some days I feel as though
a god I haven't made up my mind on yet
is watching me and
I am terrified
that He's going to send a breeze
that will scatter my atoms among
the cosmos
and at the end of it all
I'll just be re-purposed into
something,
perhaps someone,
better.

Waking up
to the taste of blood
and a shooting pain
in my side
which is now the norm
and I dont know what's
coming next since
I hadn't planned
to have made it this
far
but
things are going pretty well.

I don't go
to bars.
Not that I have anything
against alcohol,
I just can’t drink because
my liver will immediately
fail
and **** me
and I’m far too young
and beautiful
to die from alcoholism.
Not to mention,
I’ve not made nearly
enough mistakes in my
life
to have earned the
right to die miserable at the bottom
of a glass.

So I don’t go to
the bars
as there is nothing
for me there to do
other than count
how many times
that guy said
I love you
to his friend
who took him there
to get over a
recent ex

I wonder if God loves
us in the way we love
puppies
like how when a puppy
does something silly
like fall over
or eat something they're
not supposed to,
we are upset
but still love them
and maybe when
we decided to
you know,
nuke each other
and ****
and maim
and hurt
God just looked down
and said
"Oh you guys"
with a wink
because we were
all just a bunch
of sick puppies
and didn't know any better.

I write my best
poetry
when I'm at my worst
with the words I am
able to call out
while my head
goes under the
water again
and again
forming a beautiful
narrative that
attracts an audience
who pay no attention
to the person
causing all the ripples
and splashing sounds
casting sharp notes
to contrast the laughter
on the boardwalk
and I find myself
arguing a case
for meaninglessness
because that's the
only way I can
purge and create
these words
that so spectacularly
resonate with
those who need them

I am not sacrificing
myself because I'm
a savior
I'm doing it because
it feels good.

The world moves
in shades of gray
around me
and people aren't
one way
or another
they just sort of
are
and they sometimes
do great things
and sometimes
terrible
but they themselves
are just shades of gray
arguing over who
makes the best
stormy sky

I really shouldn't
get another cat
but they just
keep finding me
and wrapping themselves
around my leaks and holes
and purring until I feel better
and it's probably best for my
mental health
to get at least one more cat so that
my other two aren't bored hanging
out with each other
I mean,
three's a crowd, right?
and the only thing missing
from this fever dream
is a crowd of kittens
all loving and pure.

Sometimes you
just let the
bad ****
in the relationship
beat you over
the head over and over
again in the hopes
that you can convince yourself
that the dizziness
and the haze
are actually butterflies
like the ones you
got when you kissed
spontaneously
by your car and
you drove
home listening to
Van Halen's first
album feeling
like you had earned
the right to sing
along to
Runnin' With The Devil
and it meant something.

I once knew a woman
who said she had a dream about
water and that it had helped
her predict 9/11
and I still don't know
how to make heads or tails
of that
other than it's just something
that is.

Perth,
where Heath Ledger came from,
was where she was from
and she was explaining to me
what Marmite was
and the other guy in the room
just kept playing his guitar
and singing
louder and louder
for an audience of
white bricks
that made up the walls
because jealously makes
you see eyes in
everything
and you don't know
if the performance will
be your last

My apartment is haunted
by the ghost of Robert Frost
and it's not out of
recognition of poetic ability
but more likely due to
my cat
chewing up an old vinyl record
we found at the thrift store
of him reading his works
and now he wanders the apartment
always around the corner whispering
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood"
and I tried to ask his permission to use
that line in this
but he doesn't answer me
when I talk to him
but he likes to call my cat
Jerry McCormic
even though her name is Gumbo
and I don't mind having him
around
even though he doesn't do the dishes
and watches TV with the volume way
too loud
but I haven't seen him
around today
and the cat was sad to see him go
or perhaps she's just hungry again
on account of the Ghost of Robert Frost
spoiling her with all those
cat treats

There's something
I love about amusement parks
in that you can lose yourself
for a minute in all the noise and haze
and you forget that
the Neon Mystics are nothing more
than 15 year-olds
forced into their first job at
the local theme park by their parents
because they need to learn that
the real world isn't all fun and games
and perhaps this profound wisdom
is wasted on the youth
who don't yet realize that there
are worse fates than
a summer job
at the theme park

When you
found out
that you had
a long lost
brother
born out of wedlock
I wondered if you
were happier to have
another sibling
or just happy to
have finally
found something
to show that your
long dead
father wasn't
perfect.

The sun
is a beautiful
thing from afar,
bringing life and color
to the world and faces
around us.
Almost makes you
forget that it's a screaming
ball of turmoil that would
destroy you in an instant
if you got too close.

Speaking of which
I once knew a couple,
two particularly sunny people,
who found that their
individual lights looked better
together
and though their
relationship
was short,
the fireworks
were fun to watch
before everyone got
burned out.

I heard them
before I saw them.
On a street corner
broad daylight,
shouting at each other
about something or other
involving money
and how she made them
drive down to Texas to see
Pat Benatar in concert
and I really shouldn't
have laughed but
Love is a Battlefield
kept playing in my head
over and over
and over again.

It's funny
how much poetry
I write
just because
I want someone
to talk to

historically speaking
lobster was food
for the poor
and carp and
dandelions were
staples in our diets
and now that time
has passed
lobster
is a delicacy
and carp and
dandelions are
considered
nuisances
all the while
we seem to forget
that at the end
of the day
lobster
carp
and dandelions
are just
a crustacean
a fish
and a plant
that all exist in their
own right
without any inherent
meaning other than
what we outwardly
project

Love burns you
--even when we
describe it as something
positive
a burning love
so to speak
we are still
describing destruction
although not all
destruction is bad
such as the destruction
of your flawed coping mechanisms
and the walls you build around
your vulnerability
after the last brush with love
melted your wings
and sent you plummeting
into the icy sea below
where the cold helped your
heart come together once
more and all that’s left
now is to destroy
the shell of your former self
with fire.

we all live as
ghosts
of our former selves
haunting the fringes
of minds that at one time
could think of nothing else
other than
us
and how well we
all mixed together before we all
flew apart
it's like being dead
when you are no longer
remembered by loved ones
ghosts walk the earth
and they are you
and they are me

Instead of wasting
your time looking
for princes
and princesses
endlessly stalking the
shadows of castles
you should focus
your effort on being
a *******
dragon.

Breathe fire from
your soul, kid.

Feeling the inaccurate
heartbeat
rhythm and
indulging
in a moment
where the only
harmony
was that out our
own breathing
while everything else
trembled

hello,
why yes,
it is late
or rather
early at this point
no I haven’t
been drinking
I’m just writing poetry
yes, I realize that
that sounds exactly
like an activity for a drunk
person but I assure you
I’m only
down here
because my fiance
is up there
asleep
and you see
she works days
and I work evenings
and
what’s that?
I told you
I live upstairs.
What do you mean poetry
is an inside sport?
It’s a nice evening.
and
what’s that?
well
I rent
from the guy who
owns this chair that I’m
sitting in and I’m sure he
has no problem with me
using it at one thirty in the
morning and
really if you want I can
call him
and

What?
I am not being a *******
and
what’s that?
yeah.
okay.
uh huh.

well,
when you put it that way…
yes my bed is
a lot more comfortable than the
one you would provide
for me.

have a good night,
officer

I went to
the Lake
today.
One of the
big ones.
As we pulled in
my brother says
to me
"If this is a lake
and it's this huge,
what's the ocean
look like?"
I told him
that it probably
looks the same
but only because
we are so small
compared to the
endless water.

I have this terrible
habit
of meeting the best
sorts of people
right before I
have to go somewhere else
to begin anew

I'm delirious from
the pressure in my head
and I can't help but wonder
what the first sick caveman thought
about his illness
and if he was concerned with
the frailty of life
or did none of that matter
until we didn't have to be
worried about being killed
by large beasts
to whom
we were the
disease

Someone I chose to forget
once told me that everyone
is blessed with gifts
and his was that he could lucid dream
and I thought it was stupid
but didn't say anything
because through fist and word
I was blessed with
the gift of a fragile heart
that breaks more for people than
it has ever beat for me
because mama I'm a god ******
coward
and I'm always on the run from an
unnameable dread
that some have called
love

Poetry started out
as a hobby
for me but
as time has gone on
it's turned into something
bigger
if only because it's
cheaper than therapy

I was having a rough life
and somehow found God
and was progressing
through the valley of the shadow of death
until I was told to shut the **** up
by somebody on Twitter.

I remember
when you were
a giant,
huddled in your cave
with your friends
role-playing
the heroes
that you couldn't
be to your own children.

I keep throwing
dice at the wall
hoping to land a saving
roll that would
prompt you to come back.

An
ancient
monolithic
structure built
before the advent
of written history and
all we can really do is try
to speculate as to the building
processes without acknowledging
how many people always must perish
in the name of megalithic shots at greatness

Time
is but a human
measurement
dictating the amount of existence
between one moment and another.
Like inches on a ruler,
time moves in a linear fashion
but my favorite moments are with her
and I feel infinite
and we laugh about dumb
things until two in the morning
and oh hey we have to work tomorrow
but can take a nap
together
when she gets home.

It's only a matter of time.

Find a penny,
pick it up,
and whatever happens next is entirely up to you.

Alas,
here you stand
on my street corner
shouting.
A sainted patron
of a God
that time seems
to be forgetting.
Hoping desperately
for a flood
because
death would be
easier
than being
left behind
forgotten
and dusty
sitting in the back
corner of a nursing
home whispering
to yourself
"He shall strike the earth
and He shall slay the wicked"
hoping you aren't among
the rest of us sinners.

We joke
about the pain
of being hated
by our savior
We laugh
about the justification
of abuse
from those who were better
than from those whom we came.
We sigh
at the fact
that we never had
a childhood,
only a struggling
lurch from one
punishment to the next.

We love,
now that we are
free from your oppressive
games.
We live,
now that we are
out from your control.
We lie,
when we say that
the uncaught crimes done
don't hurt anymore.

Of course they do.

But we flourish,
determined to carve
out our own paths
down empty roads
leaving you withering
in the dust.

Instead of
practicing what we
preach
we should
preach
what we practice
and laugh in the
ensuing chaos

Sometimes I sit
hunched
over a pile of
broken glass
trying to glue the pieces
together to make something
that makes sense
but the pieces are all
different every time I
look at them
sizes, shapes and colors
all in flux
like beach sand
under a microscope
and some are circles
worn by this ceaseless sand
and some are jagged
and freshly broken
and look
you can see
a little blood
on this one here
and it’s not my blood
--this time.
Not that it matters
anyway because
I pick through this glass
and get cut
again
and again
and again
until my fingers are
shreds
and can’t grip
anything
and my blood makes
the glass all the same color
and when it dries
the coagulation
of my failure
holds together this ball of
endless translucent
torment
and I put it back into my chest
and zip up my ribs and
try to forget about the whole thing.

Until
it starts
to hurt
again.

Late nights
the glow of the tv
lighting up our otherwise
drab basement
I mean, green carpets, really?
and I played Sonic the Hedgehog
all night long desperately
wishing for the speed to outrun
my problems
and the fact that I couldn't sleep
because my bedroom was underneath
my parents' room and I could hear
the thunder of impending divorce
rolling around at the speed of sound.

Downtown has
36000 people going 36000 different ways
All noses turned up or looking down
Each experience better than the last
Footsteps on faded asphalt carry echoes
Of friendships unfocused
Blurred by distance and ***
The conversations carry
Manifestos lifted to the sky
“we are going to have a good time tonight”
“I don’t like drama but I have to say something”
“I haven’t heard from him since he went to rehab”
The endless void of downtown holding these revelations
Only to release them when the people are long dead
And downtown crumbles
And the footsteps echo no longer.