Hey Candy and Chris
can't you see that this
ain't no way to spend the day?
The slots' bright lighting
make the light inside her
fade, fade away.

J-J-J-Jenny and the bets.

Hey! Don't waste it away
the years come and don't stay
when you're spinning that roulette.
Still she sits down beside them
filling up on the tidal
feelings that she gets.

J-J-Jenny

Jenny

Jenny

Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny

Jenny and the bets.

Whether on an evening dinner date
or out for a long walk in the afternoon
I see them glare vapidly
at little rectangles of doom.

Time accelerated.
Everything will be gone so soon
yet still I see their eyes glued
to little rectangles of doom.

In joy and despair
love and contempt
the feelings are there
and they feel so true.
When black rectangles of doom
gaze right back into you.

Become abyss.

Remember when
I was me
and you were you.

Now we're just
the things we've watched,
rectangles of doom.

God I want to *******
quit.

I think about it
all the time.

For what?



...This?
I don't think so.

Either pass this mindset.
or die in the cab of a
...

I pray for the pain of
this mindset passing.

This?




Either combustionless
or insane.

The easiest way to quit smoking
is to keep looking forward to
the nicotine headrush you'll get
when you start smoking again.

Every day, every hour and minute
that you manage to hold off
will make that euphoric feeling
hit you that much stronger.

Lips pinched tight around
a cylinder of paper and fiberglass,
the sound of a Bic striking,
dipping the tip into the flame.

An inhale, a deep sigh through smiling teeth.
Slight spinning and just going limp,
letting your head hit the back of the chair.

Eyes closed.

Quitting feels...

...so

****

good.

When, at night, I'm alone with
chapped dryness on my lips
I close my eyes and just imagine
you giving me a Vaseline kiss.

Who's here
when I'm not?

Can they read this
as I write it,
does it carry across?

There's something
here
with me,
something that's
not me.

Together but not whole,
just a bifurcated hull
held together with flex tape.

We don't sink.

Is anyone here?

Lies and deceit are a heavy spritzing of perfume,
truth and honesty are a rotting carcass in the ditch.


Both are bitter and sickly-sweet to my nose,
and if my eyes are going to water either way
then what does it even ******* matter.

She uses her tongue
to write her name
on my skin,
and I can smell autumn
in the firey tapestry
of her auburn hair.

I can taste the moon on her breath,
and it reminds me of home.

Polaris is reflected on her eyes
like slumbering summer nights
spent inside
with a distant chorus of crickets
coming in through my bedroom window.

She's water in the creek
babbling beside my childhood memories
where I would play the days away.


I'm too old to feel so young.
Don't stop.

Plunged into the tides of your mind
swimming along just to find
a little space to breathe.

Crowds choke the throat of the streets
where they all came to meet
someone else to squeeze.

Now there's a sign up in the sky.
Cursive smoke spells out the end of time,
in bitter stuntplane strokes.

A brush the size of our collective hearts
comes crashing down in the dark
to paint us all anew.

I love me
for what I am.

I hate me
for what I'm not.

I've grown so
envious
of taller men

because I'm sick and tired
of standing on my tiptoes
to **** in the kitchen sink.

I can sleep in jeans.
I can sleep
anywhere.
I just close my eyes
and
I'm gone.

I wear jeans to the moon
and to the mall.
I put jeans on my legs
and on my arms.
Jean socks and jean hats,
I'm a blue fellow.

Some people get upset
when I'm a bit too honest.

Sometimes my grandfather
(known to me as my Pap)
will ask me
if I want to go to a toy train convention
at 8:00 AM on a Sunday,
and I'll say
"I don't want to, but I definitely will"
and he'll tell me
to just
forget it.

It's like this for other things too,
with other people.
Usually loved ones.

My cousin Jake
is sometimes late
for a birthday dinner,
and I'll say
"If you don't want to come, then don't."
Then I'll smile
because I'm hearing my Pap's words
coming out of my own mouth.

Pap.

He doesn't want someone to tag along
just because it's the right thing to do,
he wants someone to be as excited as he is.
He wants someone to want what he wants.

What do I want? How does anyone figure that out?
I feel like I've lived a life
wanting the wrong things.
Not wanting what others
have wanted for me.
Throwing away opportunities
to make others proud,
people like my mother.
She wanted me to be a man,
but I've lived these wandering years
as but a man-child who squanders
the days away with menial hobbies.
Lazy and unfocused I am,
I've been.
Always wanting the wrong things.

...
If I had a grandson
what would I want him
to tag along with me for?

What would I want my child
to want?

I don't know.

Do you?

The color of the slow sand
dribbling through this hourglass
is every shade of pure.

A second-hand secondhand
ticks away, rhythm eroding,
yet building tenure.

Treacle treat,
tricks are neat.
Show me your glimmering memoir.

Brightly pale
Hunter's moon
turn midnight
into noon.

Beseech beset
beside myself
put upon you
up on the shelf.

Talks and tales
told not too soon
sunder underneath
our Hunter's moon.

Sticking a tre-flip off of that three stair behind the bowling alley.

A suicide bomber strapped with C4 running into a crowded building.

Carving up the powder, bombing down the mountain on a freshly waxed snowboard.

Shooting up a movie theater with a 3D printed, fully-automatic 9mm sub machine gun.

Catching a gnarly ten foot wave off the coast of Hawaii and ramping off the lip to catch some air.

Indoctrination of uneducated children and young men to serve as soldiers for an unending holy war.

Landing a backflip on a Haro BMX bike while a crowd of onlookers chants and cheers.

Subversion and subterfuge within a foreign government in order to topple the current president.

Dropping in to a half pipe at the same time as someone else and hitting a high-five in the air.

Starting fires across a city nightscape to purge the neighborhood of vacant buildings and houses.

A quite quiet little tapping.
A tapping on the window.
Glass shivering and shaking.
Brittle bones are breaking.
Wishful whispers in the dusk.
Distant voices muffled and hushed.
Tapping, time is ticking away.
Tangled tongues clicking in pain.
Furled fingers forced inside.
Shattered shards all pushed aside.
Hangers strewn across the room.
A shadow, a hymn hummed true.

Tapping. Tapping. Tapping. Fright.
Unknown noises in the night.

Stood up again by sleep.
A sickly fickle friend, indeed.
Should the dawn ever come,
then let it ******* come
like a blessed loaded gun.

The waffle god never taught me to swim
through his crashing waves of authentic maple syrup,
and my butter pad hat slowly begins to melt
and blind my eyes
as my thoughts run fiery hot
with pulsing liquid rage
for the contempt I have
about this futile trial.

I'm happier dead and drowned
afloat face down
atop the vast, vacuous,
and viscous liquid sugar
that has thoroughly coated
my lungs and my throat.

Sure I scream
for ice cream,
but custard is
******* delicious.

****.

Sometimes I pop my shoulder out
in defiance of the pain.

Can't wait to set foot
on that electric scooter again.

Being that I was raised Catholic
and knowing what I know now,
if Heaven truly is a real place then
they must **** a lot of kids up there.

"Whomever I was in my past life
must've been a complete and total ******."


                                          - Me in my next life.

That bitter brass crash
punctuating every beat
is jarringly unsettling,
just a toy monkey indeed.

Tell me what it really means.
Tell me what it stands for,
why was such a thing created?
Wound up tightly, set it free.

The zombies will all chase it,
relentless and ever mindlessly.
Just a toy monkey?
More like a bomb, indeed.

This road of indecision
I often find myself on
is paved with countless carcasses
of squirrels and deer aplenty.

They all watch me make my way,
their eyes still brimming
with high beams and headlights.

I can hear the faint echoes
of a thousand car horns
resonating within me.

Pizza?
Wings?
Left?
Right?
I don't know.
You decide.

This bottle's been pressed
from two separate halfs.

As is much in life.

Love.

Teamwork.

We're all just as bound together
as this bitter vessel of liquor.

Just gotta pay less attention
to the seam,

and focus more on
what's inside.

Best left behind,
that's what I've found.

Sometimes if you can't understand why,
then just maybe
it's best left behind.

Carry me yonder,
my stubborn stride.
For the past, and all it's burdensome belongings are
best left behind.

I've viridian envy
for your Teflon tongue.

How painlessly your words slide
from between your lips.
Sure it may be non-stick,
but it sure is cancerous.

I'm always tied and tired.
A stuttering, blundering mess.
That's all that I can manage
when I try to address.

I'm a poor orator.
A vocal trainwreck.

Thus I turn to an inky friend:
My true new blue pen.
My words don't fumble,
or stumble around,
when I take the time
to write them all down.

My fingers don't stutter,
they don't get stuck on
certain letters.
They don't get stuck on
my first name,
or last.

I'll write it all out for you,
I'll write the whole world down.
Although I have to take a break
at least for right now, because

my hand is starting to cramp.


I guess it was all just a moot truth.
I guess my muscles do stutter too...

An empty fortune cookie.

I didn't want to eat it anyway
but now I feel like ****,
just crunching it up
and throwing it away
without even being told
my ******* lucky numbers.

Don't turn your bowl over.

Okay, fine
you can make a little mess.

I'll clean it up and
we can go outside before I leave.

Don't look at me like that.

You'll be fine, Mom will be home soon
and she's full of love for you.

You'll be fine, I promise.

Don't turn your bowl over.

So smooth and so fair,
fashion isn't really my taste
but her legs are my new favorite accessory.

Whether as a scarf on my neck,
or as a belt cinched to my waist,
**** they sure do look fine wrapped around me.

Circlet of yellow petals
ringed 'round a freckled face of seeds.
Auburn and rose gold,
ever-flowing rivulets of green.

My flower smiles in the dawn,
when the new light touches
and drapes her in radiant balm.
She's always smiling at the sun
with nary the slightest whisper
or hint of an obfuscated qualm.

That fickle sun never says goodbye,
and even on moonless nights
she turns to face the eastern sky.
With her eyes full of the stars above,
she knows that tomorrow will come
and carry with it a brand new sun

to once again set her sights upon.


My sunflower
shining so true,
I know why
I love you.

Ah,
uncaptured thoughts.

There's seldom a prospect more frightening to me,
thus I don a notebook & glorious pen
as my sword and shield
with which I'll tirelessly defend
my ever wavering memory.

I've calluses from working,
but writing always leaves me
with a couple fresh blisters.

Even the loudest dreams
drift off into oblivion
upon my waking.

Held true an honest sword, never.

Yet still a firm grip persists
from a grudge long clenched.


Gleaming and bitterly cold,
this sharpened-heartstring blade.
Forged from flesh betrayed,
handed down through ages of old.

Concrete barriers with trees painted on them?
Buildings with murals of rural landscapes?

I want to paint a grassy field like a parking lot.
I want to carve a cityscape into a cliff face.
I want to dye the sky yellow, jaundice with smog.

Bring the city to country a bit.

Hands fly.
They buzz in pretty little circles,
round and round.
The circumferential numerals
countlessly winding down days.
Hands spinning away years.

Seems their speed is dependent,
relative to routine.

Slip into a well-grooved track of mundanity
and watch the wheel run.

Dash in a bit of change, though,
and feel it slow a bit.
Take a step out of that path worn into the floor.
Face a new direction, argue with your compass.

Slow it all down.

Slow life down
to a sober crawl,
stand face to face with
that clock on the wall.

Another shirt sacrificed
to the grease-stain God.

Metal shavings glistening
in my beard,
danger tinsel.

Sparks emanating
from my aching grip,
I'm abrasive.

Eyes a-squint,
in lieu of
safety glasses.

Blood blister.

Hands rended
with numerous
nicks and cuts
all in various
states of healing.

Torn jeans,
blackened knees.

Another shirt
marked with grease.

Old Carolina Loggers
with run-down heels.

This outfit speaks,
I needn't say a thing.

Just a glance and
you know exactly
what makes me,
me.

This is the last time
I ever mistake tail lights
for the sunset.

Take a minute,
a breather,
a respite.

You lead me
quite well,
my friend,

but

I'll never be caught dead
treading water
in your wake again.