Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

A
bone
slowly
woke
just
in
time
to
become
br­ok(en).
Once spoken,
there's no point
of lending an ear.
There'll be a violent
jerking of the wheel,
deceptive *** appeal,
and an unrequited (love).
Now, unwillingly,  it's open.
The rhyme is deliberately late,
but it's not tardy enough to satiate
Swelling lungs-we're just getting started.
Both for respiratory and broken-hearted.
Here, we speak of energy-specifically kinetic
Because you can't live in love and good faith
with right hemisphere real, and left prosthetic.
AND THAT'S WHERE THIS BEAUTIFULLY KICKS IN.
Picking up faster and quicker and clearer
and headlights have never come nearer.
But I'll be somewhat content lying at rest.
While lively and enthusiastic is best,
unemployed potential is all I can be.
It's something to unwillingly see.
You'll watch the clean breaks
as the marrow escapes.
As I steadily gush
onto pavement
you'll see
how
idle
I
can
really
be.
As
I

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

I am a timeline of everything I've ever known.
It's copied onto thirty-five pieces of blank paper
and revealed to you in that mundane history course
that everyone naps through.

I can't deny
that among the black waves,
I've seen a sea star or two.
But I seem to be devoutly colorblind
to the silver linings that outline
what I've gone through.

You can't disguise your drowning,
nor can you swim to shore.
You just have to hope
that no one knows what to look for.

horns, hollow-
ly followed by a public service announcement

you do not exist in simultaneous intersectionality

YOU GIVE US CARBON DIOXIDE,
AND THUS,
you are DEEPLY ENTANGLED

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a web, spun by an anxious,
poison-cursed arachnid
holds us all by the finger-tips,
pressing each of our infinite, six-second *******
together.

gravity ensures that when the silk can no longer bear the weight of the world,
the rose-tinted lenses will shatter-------------
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
****
x

violently,
our brain stems will rot
alone.

there are two ways to breathe.

one is through the splinters.
the carved out,
thickly bleeding
respiratory tract
receding.

a futile attempt to enjoy the air
blown over like
a house with
no foundation.

the other is to
close your eyes.
and hope
that the hurricane
does not
cut off oxygen.

because
nirvana
is not a choice.

it is an island
somewhere deep in the ocean
waiting to be discovered.

I'm late, per usual
(I'm anxious,
yet not worried).

Concrete lines combine
to form
shapes, polygons,
and
anything you want them to be.

I want to help and mend
and repair

but

poison lies where kindness
stops despair.


it goes on.
The routine will sing me
the sweet swallow's song
of my fingerprints,
and of how they
parallel the hearts
of everyone else.

I'm late, per usual.

I won't
believe what
the swallow sings,
nor will I
accept what
life brings

until I've blinked enough
to dissociate.

..

my conscious,
a spec on the corner of the Polaroid lens,
a heart lost in the reeds of dampened circumstance,
a hydrangea blooming in an untended field,
meditates upon itself
like a child lost
in a superstore.

--

an ocean wave mimics its predecessor
only to fall victim to aspiration.

what will crush upon my tired bones
as they chase sunsets
in a similar search
for meaning
?

I'm not taken aback by the beauty of the sun or moon.

But that's okay, at least I've learned in time that there are very little differences between objects labeled mine and days considered wasted time. Entitlement is a false concept paralleling a religious purgatory.

That's not the point anyways. I'm left with unbearable heat and a pool of thoughts best resembling some sort of molten pudding left out in the sun for weeks of stifling inattention.

Let it just be known that the smell was not my intention.

Regardless of what fills your nostrils ephemerally, keep in mind that this stench haunts me perpetually. It's apathy towards my sensitive skull stifles me. It's as if I was able to just shake off these shadow-inducing invaders like a bad habit. But no matter how much you try to **** a shadow, it's always there following you. Breathing on you. Casting oxygen upon your neck until there's nothing but sweat and fear left to expose.

With such an affinity to what darkness lies behind me, there are few words to authentically compose.

How can I continue? How can the beat stay in rhythm and my words stay in tune when I'm a butterfly stuck in a cocoon? If these hollowed walls could speak I bet they'd entertain the idea on meaningless entrapment.

Go now. My words for this horrid state of mind have run dry. They do nothing but mask themselves and then exponentially multiply.

So leave me for the beauty of the sun and the moon. I'll never wish anything more than a simple, concurrent release of everyone from his or her respective cocoon.

Light the funeral pyre.
The fleeting fire of desire
will never keep you higher
than a space devoid of *******,
or the clever whiff of wit.
(whether or not I deserve it)
I looked you in the eyes;  I shook.
The embarrassing strength it took.
The longing I have for you
is asymmetrically split in two.
A love for the rendezvous,
but a run from the morning dew.
That's you.
But realistically,
I'll be me.
And to be free,
I'm finally happy.
And she's out there-
a heart of care,
soft, translucent hair,
some lacy underwear,
a smile to defeat despair.
Every time I doubt,
I see you there.
And then you're everywhere.
You're my sturdy, wooden chair,
and the cowlick in my hair.
And to be fair,
I've got some pretty sweet underwear.
But ****, when you’re there,
you're there.
And for me,
you're everywhere.

What shapes do you think of
when you sit under trees?
Blunt corners, forgiving curves-
a fluctuation that never seems to ease.

Do we circle in repetition?
Or is self defeat
a mirage of an inhibition?

The lines sometimes will never touch.
But this lack of closure
does not discount your right
to an ameliorative crutch.

I don't seem to belong.
To the beating hearts, the
worn out, dirt-stained,
wry,
perpetually filthy
bluejeans.
I just am.
And how can that be enough?
I am a sheep in a flock
without such a heart.
For if wool covered potential,
any of my skin would be detrimental.
How can such a beast feel
stuck between an
immovable slab of concrete
and what is actually real.

Listen to life unapologetically.
For if there is no response,
remorse may go unmuted,
but unheard.
The only problem
worth deeming absurd
is that I was given this
flesh-filled, ruddy red *****
with a broken bridge
leading a trite path
to spoken word.

Depression? Sure, that's tough.
But honestly,
all I ever wanted was to be enough.

Each moment recalled.
Each late night, computer-installed,
with stunning fireworks,
and a missed train, stalled.
She was just always so
appalled.

And when I do recall,
some stupid trip to the mall
or the seventieth missed call,
I just can't think
of anything else
but how I hate
your vicious attempt to assimilate,
your inevitable success,
and that honeybee yellow dress.

How I lost all of those years
wiping away all of her livid tears.

A knife,
or just another unwashed dish.
The leftover fish
had her looking more
like a side dish.

And watching me
slowly disappear
with a conscious clear.

Even the malicious robins will find rest
as the kindest worms hope for the best.
But to be eaten up and tossed back down,
leaves any earthworm broken,
anxiously wishing to drown.

I'm not too inclined to write.
Because my roots lie deep in soil
unmended
and highly offended by such
apathetic precipitation. Approximating that
any hint of hope
was barren.

So a love life-
one, call her wife.
She austerely abided by permanency
despite omnipresent strife.
There was simply no life.
Nothing.
Not an attempt to stick it out
past
imaginary doubt.
All when you were
all my life was about?

Days of
ferris wheels
and
tickled squeals
bring on such sweet strength.
But I can't say anything
blunted the light
more than your shadow.

I digress.

It's always been a battle
My blind past,
they say,
shows only decay.

If green is still visible,
on a day chemically dismal
remember
that still
I'm not inclined to write.

I felt your breath and smoke like
adjacent trains.

------------

I lost my heart in the war between
what took place in normal Syrian towns
(just like the ones I learned how to read in
and the ones I danced through your hair like
asymmetrically curling waves in,
and the ones where
I saw love die like a
half-lit cigarette still burning)
and  
what your skin looked like when the wind blew off the sheets so softly that mice could have ran marathons-
where shrouded shadows cleared vision like your cornfields of tightening nerves,
forever unwinding mine.

It was hiding in between your teeth and all of the other places that were too brightly shaded for me to sun-tan under,
where
you are sixteen acres of magnolia trees donning the darkest leaves that forests will ever see,

and we mirror each other's company so tragically.

----------

Inside,
your fireplace warmed our souls like
Phish Food
and whatever chemical reactions occur when love overpowers self-loathing.

wanting everything and
nothing
all together
and
unraveling entire
fabrics
by a single string.

how confusing
it is
to replace
dry, cracking knuckles
with magnifying glasses.

how soothing it is
to lean unseen
behind the masses.

these walls
might as well be mirrors.

there is no escape
from the cells
of the skin.

there's just a hope
that shedding
will provide
a way
to untangle the fabric.

In the end,
Who tells me who I am?
he tells me that it's him,
and she tells me that it's her.
And this entitlement is surely not universal.

We must decide ourselves.
Horrifically.
But how can I possibly be blind to all of this noise?
When the streets are filled with final blueprints
Of how my life will play out?

For all of us
The words placed upon us slither around our arteries
And up to our brains.
They insert venom into the soul gleefully.
And the poison is ubiquitous.
It's terribly malicious.
Because we must decide.
Who speaks fact
and who fiction.

In the end,
I must decide who I am.
I must dig into my heart with a rusty shovel and push.
My only wish
is that I don't hate what emerges from this abyss.

everything is always out of focus, and the lens won't adjust.

i can't ever see lightning or romance. hell, i can't even see the top of the world when i'm comfortably on its shoulders and all i want to do is help bear some of the weight.

my bones have never known a shortage of blankets,
just anguish over idly watching the thermostat push the tea kettle to a breaking point where all it can do is scream.

glasses can't fix this.

My skin is worn and torn
like a coniferous seed
waiting to grow
into
a towering pine
and then into
a ream of paper
that mostly just
becomes crumpled
individually
and thrown out
like a heart
bleeding far too frequently,
forcefully gushing itself
onto innocent polypropylene
white as purgatory.

My new soft shell
is slowly reborn.

I can't provide comfort
with bulging ****** knuckles
and fingertips burnt,
scarred,
and eyesight that
is mediocre at best.

My hands have seen enough days
to bandage abrasion
and let go of hate.

My detachment never ceases;
but to pick up the slack
of a nervous system gone bad
is to live a deciduous life
perpetually changing seasons.

A spark, a spark, a spark
An ignition in the street.
A compromise to sweep you off your feet
and repeat
why do you stand beside me?
A cheek
a kiss
a pretty hand to hold
behold
the power of how much an emotion can do.
A bottle of wine after a disappointment,
or a compliment and a kiss
of those ethereal lips.
Talk to me about why you are here.
Why me?
How do I deserve the sound of your everything?
She waits to speak in the most beautiful way
the action could possibly be completed.
Love.
The love that you give me.
The grip when you hug me,
The look when you kiss me,
The nook where you took me
And the meal that you bought me
And the lessons you've taught me
And the things you've shown
To make me a better person.
And she didn’t even know the half of it.
She didn't know that her eyes exploded with significance.
She didn't know that her smile never ended nor began.
She didn't know
how lucky I truly was
to be here.
All I knew is
I'm glad I bugged her,
I'm glad I called her,
and I'm glad that she answered.

I'm fueled by
cheap cold cuts
and cracked cans
of beans,
of beers,
and being below
the line of uneven
distribution//////

retribution.

There's a bit of execution
in the way a anti-institution
peels of its mask
and reveals revolution.

I don't know why the prism
is cracked
but
the shattered shards
glimmer & commentate
why we
can only see shades.

There's an anchor.
It's pulling me
closer
and
further away.

They say that she will be.
And as far as I can see,
I'm sheltered
by some rugged,
broken
skeleton of a
body containing skin.

So how can love be released?
Every day of absorption
but nothing
but self-bullying
blown miles
out of proportion.

Soft skin can
pass love and passion;
but it's the thick,
rugged
flesh
your subconscious
seems to remember.

I am a fingernail
covered in cayenne
bitten to the core.

I am a neuron
running into walls
in a room with no door.

I am
the feeling in your gut
the last time you felt sick.

I am
the feeling in your heart
when it does not tick.

I am a broken tea ***
boiling cold water.

Sunday newspapers continue to gather fragile New England snow on the curbside,
a stomping ground for purgatory, the home for these roller-coaster thoughts.

i'm not much for small talk.
my clothes are always inside out and i'm raging losing battles with my steel-toed tear ducts-

steel, as
grunting is a masculine expression,
and so i'll lift weights,
but gain no strength, just aches of all of the intimacy that I've never allowed myself to emit or absorb.

a soggy sponge,
a rotten oak stump,
fallen leaves-
a childhood meal coming back up over the fists and the heaves.

counter-intuition,
the alcohol binds the seams;
tear ducts are dams
and everyone needs a method of additional reinforcement.

numbness and empty-mindedness aside, I'm
still a make-shift dumpster lover,
hardwired, disassociated hinge-sucker.

too sensitive to open the window blinds or morning newspaper,
there is still no muscle definition, only
liver damage.

A brief, but passionate inhale.
Who would have thought,
of the autumn in her eyes?

A sweet, delicate voice.
A beautiful sound to detect.
And never forget.
And never regret*.

The stud of a nose
Her own clothes and eloquent verbose
An unheard of strength
That she shrugs off like dirt.

And she knows of Dad.
Because she has been there too.
Not just for the smell of *****,
Or for the pain of just one bruise,
But for the depth behind
A clenched fist
and the struggle for eye contact.

It was 6 AM.
In the autumn.
And things just happen.
But see,
it wasn't just a thing.
It couldn't be.
The way I held your hair
And hid it safely behind your ear.
And accepted the kiss
That my fear could not initiate myself.

It was the blue,
And the blonde.
The black of the beanie,
And the spots of the sweater.
It was the look
and the smile
and the inhale.

And then
it was the stars.
And the stone wall.
And the Boston skyline.
It was the teasing.
and the alcohol
and the spot by the river.
And it was autumn in her eyes.

It was heaven in the trembling of my knees,
and in that kick in the shin,
and in the brownie brittle,
and in the passionate kiss in the room upstairs.
It was hell in the uncertainty.

And as the time will pass,
We will attract or repel.
Naturally.
And where this ambiguity chills me to the bone,
I find autumn in her eyes.

we're lead claiming to be paint.

i never had the right.
i never saw black as all of the colors at once,
or as the absence of any,
i just allowed retinas to dance and be still without ever taking any of it in.

monochrome rhymes with monotone but no apartment or pasture has ever been warm enough to call home,
at least for hollow bones and eyes constantly shifting from a gregarious green to a more genuine grey.

no one ever hears the crickets, even when the floodgates are open or we're searching for that perfect shade to transform the canvas.

you were a monkey with a paint brush,
a brief rush of lust disguised as beauty and anything else that retinas could convince themselves to be mindful of.

chipping paint on the garage will remain and any lungs in proximity will continue to breathe in the dead crickets.

i don't have the right and we'll never get it right.

Peel it off
One by one
By every single thread
So every single strand
Is unwoven by a broken hand
And reveal to us
What you've done.
Were you scared?
Were you scarred?
Beaten and mashed in and marred
by the wasteland in which we breathe?
I don't know which came first:
the euphoria of absolute power
or the fear of it.
Regardless,
we are here.
in the wasteland.
And the worst thing you can do-
the only crime you can commit-
is to stop peeling layers.
and stop wondering why we are
where we are.

status binds us and we are
cutting off limbs with
flat head screwdrivers.

do you hide under the covers like i do?
does the Vicodin block the heat like your air
conditioner?

billiards and midnight jogs do
not swim like professionals do,
but they keep my memory from defaulting
to all the chairs you placed jeans or
leggings
or a hope for a swift removal of pain
inside of a safe with
fingertips stronger than narcotics.

a pass code for purpose is a pig in flight;

we have maps but we will not ever understand how to read them.

My gums hurt-
the toothache is hard to swallow
when we
mend the broken bones
with the loose change in the couch
and the buttons from
worn out cargo shorts.

Take standard biology,
an ideal economy,
and authentic authonomy
with a grain of salt.

We can't find or feed
while we bleed.
It seeps from cortexes
into yesterday,
into today,
into some
puddle
huddled around the fire
for warmth.

We melt just as the ice cubes
in your lemonade
on days
where
nostalgia has no
tranquil, oaky shade.

Stand at the length of lions.
Its breath is about as tolerable
as greed is swallowable.

While these dreams go hungry,
we feast.

While wolves
eat our spines as meat,
we are sheep
turning yellow from the heat.

I'll always have this feeling on my shoulder
and this stench on my breath.
What you never knew
was just how bad it would get.

All I wanted was reciprocation-
eyes that actually cared,
hands that actually struggled,
and a laugh that rang genuine.

Something is just missing.
Always has.
Maybe my affinity to anything
was violently torn from me.
Or maybe it's just my fault.

Am I nothing more than a plateau?
Rising in exuberant expectation,
gliding with excessive perspiration,
and then decaying like past-due precipitation.

i.
pictures hung so abundantly like there was a ponytail for every assorted alcoholic beverage that would go down while you sat on the counter top with grey in your eyes
or on my lap like lavender gloves. i bought flour and red velvet as atonement, but hollow words are as indicative of unfaithfulness as your eyelashes were indicative of my heartbeat speeding up like your raggedy red Taurus on the Pike and slowing down like our souls in self-reflection, co-morbidly.

ii.
i clip to cold like frozen gnomes but the room with fire was bellowing through the chimney in your irises. it was the ceiling i was the most comfortable collapsing under. Merlot, you are a peach and almost all of the sun that our brains can ultravioletly receive. There is no where to run to when logs and THC are crackling while you let my try on your scarves and you rub my arm horizontally like there was no famine or *** trafficking in the world. The rabbit is always right and Dewey loved the hay and telling us that we belong together. there was no time to guess the right combination of psych meds and there was certainly no one there to close the sliding glass door.

we'd unzip and kiss in a mist of dampened television volume while everyone was asleep. i fell into you, first in billions of separate-cardboard puzzle pieces and then all at once like oblivion within a climate-controlled stadium.


iii.
i noted the same pictures in this room and how your ponytails ended all existing threats to human suffering.

iv.
i loved the dark and the stars and the soupy-vacuum, pulling us in and spitting us out like a bitter mango.
there was never any water in your pool to turn green and so the unfilled concrete was an ocean to our symmetrical lawn-chair thrones, radiating green jeans and the hazel-stained dream-scene.

we lost what vision was real and what was a dream. this was a gift beyond any explanation or expectation. yet, you wouldn't let me remove all of the shrapnel and funnel antibiotics with my barren fingertips onto your scalp.

v.
here, there was kin-
the only room in which your skin didn't show me a piece of you,
but your words did.
there's a way that all of our lives collide like a supernova and our explosion felt more like a hundred-decade erosion,
giving and taking from each other like a sea-side boulder and the tide.


vi.**
you finally showed me the flesh you were ashamed to show the couch, your bed for two in Easthampton, mac & cheese without almond milk, the top of Wachusett, the pit of a pizza dish, the sink of the swooning stitches, the empty pool, the movie theater, your fake bras, and
everything else that supported us like an apparition that wouldn't return my favorite t-shirts.

and i was in.

my fingernails were there. every hair i touched while panic deducted consciousness in some scarce granting of a wish was another prarie for me to grow corn and flowers and ecstasy within. every single crop died but i never forget how self-loathing turned into a comforting sleep. we ran from consciousness like a runaway train but you were always on my back, whispering that solidarity was a the solution to a world that values prosperity over pragmatic humanity.

all the tears and dreams that danced like the branches in the frigid, unforgiving winter were dried up like a creek that i lost consciousness in when you shut the door.

these spaces exist in purgatory because i don't remember my dreams anymore and nothing really ever means anything,
like biting off my fingers in all of these rooms that are left with only memories of you.

I have heard a heart
drop and a
heart burst,
but I've never quite felt
a contraction
or inflation
as red
or
as full of life
as you.

You are blue
in an ocean
that never knew.

Yellow paints
the sun,
and your hips,
too.

I gather flowers
in valleys,
blooming without
any stems
for you.

wilting,
every seed is a perennial flower-
roots embedded within aortic dreams;
bursting dandelions are just defined weeds.

we're not compost,
just pawns of propagated watering cans,
soaking in messages so malevolent that
eugenics becomes an assimilation heuristic.

seven-billion shells in
six summers of no shade,
six winters of dancing with devils and self hate,
six seasons of victims hating the victims just the same.

sharing a garden-bed to enrich each other's soil,
fallen petals call for tearful hymns,
not a body count.

Apathy
is not
pathetic.

Apathetic
is
nothing less than pandemic.
But
nothing less common
than soles wearing out
between hot, molten asphalt
and the swellling skin.

you've been begging to just cave in.

But I can't live and not care.
Fiction is nothing to compare-
except all of the scenery that matters.

A horizon is subjective.
So the billboards
and the spider chords
have still taught me nothing.

I am opening my eyes to the green.
I am shaking like a lantern unseen.
I am a seed
planted on top of a building
waiting for sunlight.

One step leads to the next.
Propels us
Compels us
to do more
despite what rewards we reap for idleness.

Don't forget it
you have to remember.

Another night of lost scarves and broken glass?
Another autumn wrapping winter in foiled paper?
Another snowflake to break the camel's back.
Another night  to be propelled
and compelled
to continue.

Stepping into another day
is much like stepping into a tunnel.
Our insecurities hidden
and our dreams in the distance.

There is a light.
There must be.

I'll be the one to give you the while.
to be there for soup and sniffles.
I'll be the one for savage days and lonely nights
to heal the burns, to count the stars.
I'll be the one to push you into the clouds
to remind you of you, once in awhile.
I'll be a shining rose on a warm spring afternoon.
I'll be your favorite pair of earrings.
I'll be a sweatshirt when it can't seem to get warm.
I'll be the ice cream,
the perpetual supporter of your self esteem.
Not to touch,
but to feel.
Not to sway,
but to swing.
Not to love,
but to adore.
Not to ease,
but to excite.
To smile, to hold, to love.
Just let me in.
To love, to love, to love.

sleepwalking for one more hour.

sleepwalking for two decades with a protruding gut and
eyes as buried deep as petrified wood,
i’ve dug up a treasure-
a realization, if you will.
everyone will leave when they see the ice sheets on my bones.

a feather without a breeze,
a storm of acid rain,

wind currents in hibernation,

gasping, treading, begging for a direction to open eyelids,
sinking,
sinking,
losing oxygen-

marathons,
pockets filled to the brim with stones,
i am drowning as far inland as a swimmer can be,

i am a cold, cosmic dot and one hour will not burn enough energy-
my brothers and sisters in the cold, i am
one hour further away from leaving this lonely, unforgiving, jagged, racially segregated and
factory farming piece of terrain that has worn down my bones without ever using a blade.

one hour closer to the next heartbreak, to feeling my heart as a vase dropped down the stairs of an apartment complex, friendly enough to feel its walls in my soul like fresh lipstick on my cheek, apathetic enough to leave the shards under the jungle jim for weeks.

one hour further away from the dishonest dream of my grass-stained bare feet, no nails in tires, and mom singing to pop radio while making chicken-
one hour more distant from broken pencils and dad’s empty beer bottles. drifting like a poor, lonely cloud given the horrific gift of conscious thought, i am one hour further away.


sinking.

one more hour of frozen tundra,
i am waiting for daylight to come and pass
as a sheep without wool,
dying much too slowly,

for one more wretched,
godless
hour.

I've been evanescent:
an irrelevant adolescent.
I've felt this for years,
through tardive tears,
rusted shears,
and too much time ducking in the shade.

Sometimes,
I just don't know if it's worth it.
My bed holds me closer than anyone,
and she can't repair the cuts on my fingertips.
(Nor can she silence the creeks or the drips.)

In memory and in reflection,
we hide from present affection.
But I'll invite the bullet,
and accept your kiss.
(For it is all I've wanted
for as long as the recent past recalls.)
For there's an electric hue in your cheeks:
a cunning current vibrating my days into weeks.

You complain of certain self-distortion,
and blow mindless fault out of proportion.
But as the facts would have it,
you are the brightest sun on record.

I am relevant.
I can and will scream loud enough to be heard.
But I will mute beautifully for you.
I will absorb every cell of your existence
with each auspiciously soothing word.

i'm absorbing the pain of your lacerations -
the tattoos of your mother's screams
etched in between your knuckles.

a canvass,
whitened and deeply dented,
takes the form of wordless, celestial aspiration -
the manifestation of release from an invisible prison.

your clanging tin cup on the bars asks for logic -
in response,
the uncompromising transmission sits in silence.

your mind does not deserve such a fate.

under opaque bedsheets,
a reversal in perspective unlocks the gate.

a house divided may only stand
if division negotiates with gravity
in blind faith.

waking up
now reminds me more of
digging up bones,
rather than skipping stones.

water isn't all that I hyped it up to be.

I drove miles and miles just
to discover
that the heat was broken,
and that your affection
is more of an illusion
than an authentic token,
wrapped in ***
and compassion.

Through metal weights
and steel plates,
I make a living.

Through some sort of
endless storm,
I will live

the darkness will ultimately illuminate all of the light and altruism that we have to bring to this world.

--

we've fallen short of grace-
is this a choice?
do the sounds under our skin that emulate doors,
pieces of dense wood,
being the victims of vigorous passive vindication,
cry out of
desire
or
necessity?

no one answers.
no one can-
no one.

to suggest such a static solution simplifies abundance and ignorance and when screen doors remain idle,
leaving holes for wasps, spiders, and
beating
hearts
to emulate chromatic symmetry between pasta,
soft noodles,
and softer irises;
of bed sheets and donated couches of past lovers-

to flood apartment doors and grated gates without mercy.

the paradox lies within the absence of sound when we knock on screen doors and no one can ever hear, not even
ourselves.

far away enough from five pizza doughs per plastic bag or purple keys to a locked unit,
your multicolored hair lights up a coffee shop on days where thunderstorms keep the paper from being delivered.

"she's a sweetheart," the woman in the turquoise blouse says
to her wife,
noting nothing of stains on her apron or
the colors of California strife.

wildfires have lit your eyes for ages, parts per million of the cyclical, ecological division. anything hazel will fade into oblivion with enough self-doubt.

when you've tied your last sweatshirt around your waist, I will hold you through the memories of the wildfires, passing out on the bathroom floor, losing her, the lies that your mother told you, and when you flew just far away enough from the ocean,
but too close to the sun.

it scorches with agonizing pain but i suppose we all have to stare into the sun once more after our eyes have been burnt badly enough to burst.

Love in an elevator
Procrastinated "see you later",
and how I ******* hate her.
An attest to me?
No, attest to thee,
And protest the conquest
for outdoor reccess.
No I didn't break it,
I found it that way.
No love in an elevator,
Satiated, recluse motivator.
See the rust on the bones?
They happened when you were home alone.
Home but not alone.
Check your sunrise, check your phone.
I will check it before I wreck it,
and remember she still deserves respect.
Despite the state of the insect.
We all need love.
Not some hope from above.
A genuine sunrise check.
A dauntless morning peck.
The hope for this comfortability
The mind's wish for mobility
The endless denial of futility
And my endless conquest for you.

There are eyes that confront,
but there is no remorse.

Brown carries a negative connotation
and so the story carries on.
There will be eyes of this coloration,
but rarely a tale of happiness.

The theories behind formulas
don't take emotions into consideration.
It's kind of a misappropriation,
if you think about it,

We spend lives following
sequences, patterns, developments.
But we're only becoming dense
as we're hollowing.

I wish to love
as I wish to breathe.

I wish to love
as I want to believe.

This unreachable constellation
is a similar misappropriation.

I am a ball of yarn
hopelessly tangled
and
ignored.

You are a seamstress-
weaving optimism
and pragmatic emotion
for the forlorn.

numbness, my old abusive life partner, trickle down my spine and gush outward like a broken levee.

stay up far past a reasonable bed time to think about a reality where purpose is more evident. work, work, work. learn the circuitry of computer programs that will never solve world hunger. listen to sad songs on the drive home. empathize with roadkill.

float above your body. smell the surroundings and mimic all of the textbooks you've read on active listening. grin and nod while your mind transforms more and more into pile of melted wax. become nauseated by the stench of your own life. let it seep into your bloodstream like a rotten batch of dope.

think about death. think about death during breakfast. think about death when the sun goes down on an uneventful Sunday afternoon. think about death during ***. think about death while getting drinks with friends. ponder why this earth decided to play the role of an impolite and overworked host. feel sorry for the sun for having so much responsibility.

cry until the faucets allowing your tear ducts to stop are broken. let your dinner become play-dough. be a gracious host to the parasites in your mind. swim with them like the dolphins. lose grasp of why waking up is so important. swallow whiskey like saliva. promise yourself that you won't drink four tall-boy Pabst Blue Ribbons on a Tuesday night. drink four tall-boy Pabst Blue Ribbons on a Tuesday night.

hold numbness while it cries in your lap and promises that it will change-that things will be different. allow it to feed you lies like someday you'll enjoy the sunrise and someone will realize that you're not too broken to love

rip skin off of limbs. try to make it another day.

The joy you provided me
transports me to
floating fossils,
swollen tonsils,
and hearing aids
that kept you within an ear's length.

I remember water;
I remember the way that making blood colder
was an antidote to growing older.

When you grew old,
I recognized that sandpaper shows
beauty in rigidity,
and even the tough

show fragility.

Taste buds and rewired pathways
helped write the book,
but nothing will ever parallel
the compensation,
softness and
comfort
that sandpaper provided my skin.

A new flower only blossoms with water
and rigorous concentration.
Good intentions just aren't enough these days.

You're in bloom,
your pistil rises and grabs the sun
like a new promotion.

Mine lies on the top shelf of my closet.
And sharp mahogany corners
don't bring me closer to any answers.

My kindred, my barren love
some meaningless God,
voided by logic and chemicals-
I have been told to plant my roots
within their soil.

They have been told to reach for me
just outside of arms length.

Absence doesn't make use weary-
it reveals to us the vast pastures
within mahogany boxes-
it manifests the bittersweet drought
I have swallowed like a jagged pill.

I watch you bloom in violent meadows.
I concentrate by daydreaming.
This way,
when blood fills all the small spaces,
the guilt won't **** the minerals
from vibrant, naïve roots.

Let's return to where I was when my tongue wasn't so hollow. Where the pills weren't nearly as hard to swallow. To think so deeply is both a curse and a blessing, and there's no wound dressing for nostalgia in negative space. But when I scrape my knee again can you lend an ear? I think I feel it coming. I feel the past flowing through my veins like a sharp shot of dope under a dimly-lit causeway. The grass of the lawn that I used to play on is starting to grow on my back and seep into my scarce serotonin, and I really need someone to regularly attend to it. Mow it on an altruistic sunny day with the kids running around you and laughing. Pull the weeds out when I end up staying past midnight working on the file reports for all the others that can't seem to find their authentic reflection either.

I'm back there in the woods. There was something about the fragile, half-broken branches lying on the ground that made me feel understood. I don't know if it was the demeanor or the distance. I couldn't hear the angry screech of an eighteen pack or decipher the blue from the black. It was the furthest thing from my favorite noose or the truth of the love around me cut loose.

It was the days that my brother and I would congruently comply. We'd go into the backyard and have no foreshadowing of tissues scarred. We'd run and we'd laugh and we never looked back. We'd continue into the night because we didn't care that we couldn't see the grass stains anymore. The obscurity of the look on my face could perhaps explain why I have always blended into the background with such effective camouflage. When mom did call us in to shower of the dirt, there wasn't yet blood on her shirt. She smiled, and I remember her smile so well. So little to say and so much to tell.

The funny thing is that he wasn't around back then either. He was trapped in a time long before the doctors detected my first pulse. Somewhere in this streak of gray hair and emotional despair was a feeling so strong that it was drinking itself to death to reveal its true colors and stillborn brothers. But oh God, how I loved Christmas morning. Under the array of strings of lights and the daytime not seeming as lonely as the nights, there was not a hostile bone in the human body. There was simply a long forgotten innocence filled with cinnamon buns, coffee that stayed a little warmer than usual in the Kureg, and the cats rolling around in the piles of wrapping paper like they were the ball-pits at the McDonald's both ways down the street. It was the clack of a controller. My favorite friends beating games in one night and sleeping over. It was wiffleball  games right after the nights where I'd two whole boxes of Mac and Cheese. It was sledding down the tallest hill in town on the days where the ice held your head up high and didn't need any praise, or even a reply. It cared nothing for the size of the nails on my feet, my favorite band on repeat, or the broken wooden bridge between my amygdala and frontal cortex. r

But then I remembered that those days exists only in two places: my memory and my dreams. Was I in a hopeless daze in the middle of the street or did I have my favorite fleece blanket for heat? As the crust in my eyes slowly broke away at the seams, I received my answer. It was a fate that seemed equal to a vicious and malignant cancer.

I was awake for another day. The humidity of my dorm room danced across my skin like a bead of sweat anxiously running down the back of my neck and spine. I remembered the concrete line drawn between this world and the one in my head, turned my body so that the morbid did not seem fully dead, and connected my foot with the frigid ground and didn't make a sound. I had two grocery carts and a porcelain tub full of responsibility, yet I found myself frozen and void of mental mobility.

I didn't know what to say when I started my days anymore. So I brushed my teeth, remained mute, and walked out the door.

What do you have to hide,
some beautifully broken side?

An ocean away from the Ivory Coast,
my feet are too clean and my mind is too *****.

i'm so far away from this euphoric, ruddy discharge that my bed has transformed from a lukewarm boulder into all of my favorite childhood memories-
the unconscious a candy apple,
your dreams a sugary topping.

there you are-
wavering like a flag torn piece by piece from the wind,
savoring my tears like a glass jar,
gleaming ubiquitous affection, yet stoic,
unaffected by the blistering mantle-heat.

this ocean is my hospital gown tied so tightly that i can no longer breathe in your deepest fears and swallow them like morning coffee.

this ocean is my mother, choking on soothing words, repelling suicide with optimistic rhetoric, neurons firing in a tone so hectic that silent meditation is an inaudible conversation.

this ocean is the anti-depressant that ***** on my skin like a vacuum, dr. nestling his blindfold like an infant

this ocean is my empty home, abandoned, lost in the noise.

someday my feet will be ***** again,
and i'll feel your unyielding warmth like quarries in the summer,
dropping all of the noise and mending with what matters most,
where i'm blending in with infinite shades
of the Ivory Coast.

The dream sends the signal;
the battery applies the shocks.
Don't rest a weary head on blankets full of rocks,
like a pillowcase full of hard knocks.

It's consciousness;
it's metamorphosis,
but the backflip out of the cocoon
doesn't indicate an exit too soon,
but rather a kick
for bad shtick
on why I hear them
and my chemicals don't match
yours
or

(You think you have it bad?)

I've had a share of troubles
but nothing to compare to
stares or glares
of empty yesterdays
and broken sticks on snares:
I guess your most important thought
is
who the hell cares?

Orb sinks slow while
the numbness of routines exit
and nothing
becomes less
abstract and more of
your hollow, melting core.

This has a moral
This story ends at some point in time,
but I don't have an answer for when.

(You think you have it bad?)

Every story has an ending
and every cracked palm
deserves mending.

_

Wake up,
*you don't have it that bad.