/ø/

dregs.

right in front of them

so intimate the room felt sweaty with their
thousand-mile stares, wonderment on the tips
of their noses, sunburned and scarred
it's all illusion, of course, all
second-guessing and up-dressing and
until i feel your corduroy stubble
i will go on wondering what you think at night

like apples from trees, me and my melody
tripping along until
cool earth claims us
decomposing until we gain some
sort of composure and boy
that will be the day.

so my ear feels sweaty
my breath is condensing
choke it down, choke it down
i feel lost, i feel found
what a strange merry-go-round.

be a berrrrreeeaver

lies!

the view that comes with you

think, tree-shaped shadows, windows
will reflect.

every time i die a little
religious confirmation, clairvoyant

remember forts and trees and
civil wars? ones without acronyms?

windows will reflect.

mirrors keep on lying, children
sit there crying, and god, it seems
so right. if i could only think
every day
there would be
everything
left to say.

wonder, revel, tree-shaped burns, the heart
it always knows when to turn

rain, pain, stalker parade.

these ridges, seldom touched, commanded
me to wash my back clean of sweat, hate.
sea-side delivery. what the hell.
deliver me.

down in new orleans, we're
filling soup bowls and breadlines
with beer and prawns and
holy hell, it's not even mardi gras.
but the rain feels like it's filling us up
and the rest of the world
will just melt away with years.

and it does, actually.
this entire year will melt on my tongue
until it's nothing but wrappers and boxes
and maybe a little negative sign.
doesn't that bother me? obviously.

so i will take a shower in acid rain,
command my skin to bear the pain.
sea-side resorts never knew what to do with me.
this year i'll learn to forget.

where my part is

so we bundled our blankets and set them on stone
and these makeshift pillows,
they leave us alone
in the morning and after and it
sounds like a song
but i'm running and tripping
and my breathing's all wrong

let me up, i would shout
as though some strange boulder was
actually pushing me down.

at times i am gazing at gases and lights
the rings of jupiter
on a cold, frozen night
but mostly i'm thinking and you know
i can't see, there are rocks in my
chest, there are socks
in my sleeves.

home.

second place was never enough for me
winter races and bobsleds all crashed
outside, i'm feeling too late
let the ambulance come, let the
waters flood, i guess i'll just wait

simple news

for the first time i tried
harmonizing in discord
i am an apostle of the paradox
a needle in the snow
sunlight sang to me from so many
miles up, and i listened like a diligent
mop and broom, dressing room
i'm busy putting on my face to meet the faces
that i face.
i'm a goddamn bulldozer.

and the ways in which i change are strange
the eyes i leave behind are strange
and staring.

i keep on serving different
different meals. maybe i should have known
i keep to myself these days
i keep myself to strict rhythms
wild lights.
and the older
the rest is sitting on the desk
gathering dust and crumbs.

this is getting to be a popular series

i run myself silly in circles
goddamn, i'm a fool
but it's okay for you

see i say these things and it's scary
because saying them means
they are true. i told you, can't lie
can't pretend to
and falling is just what i do

cloudy today but no rain came
i let the cd play
for two minutes too long
the song switched to something depressing
left me guessing
what sits in your head

i'm writing to someone else's melody
singing to someone else's tune
i've got my own song but i lose it
the moment i think about you.

various points of intersection (cross-section)

the seats on this train
are never wet, only forgotten.

nothing's wrong, nothing wrong
it's hard to imagine a time when
anything could ever be wrong
but i try
i make sure my bending trees
and flowing streams are there
just in case
and i look at you sadly
because parts of me think
"nothing lasts"

but then other parts of me
have names and games and
landscapes all mapped out.

god, the future is strange.
i much prefer today.

sim

i think somewhere my sudden twin
is illuminating, elucidating
planting coherence and taking mine,
taking mine and potting it up somewhere
nice and locked. these are consumptive days
full moons look to me like omens
full moons are fiction. nothing is full.

back on television caesar's chanting
i get distracted; i always get distracted
chain-link fences cannot keep me in.
a world war could not keep me out.

i do not want to march but i keep on
keeping on.
i feel asthmatic.

i think somewhere someone has taken my
voice, bottled it up and stuck it
in my chest cavity
so every time i scream
or laugh, or cry
it tickles.

i want to cough my emotions out
and wear them on my cuffs.

a brief visitation

somewhere underneath lincoln's
head and underfoot we sound
a horn we chant the words
beneath a hill for days gone by
i've loved a universe, lived a lie.

when this bridge gets hard to hold
i hope your wallet's full.
and i hope one day we can burn the
days when we have to wish them down
until then, until then
i'll work it out. i'll work it out.

re: reminder: recursion

asymmetrically the boy fell
first one-third of him
and then his face
and then the rest
he left only an eyelash behind
suspended in the strangeness that
was its faceless life

the more the boy wandered the more
he grew.

seven stars glittered that night
only seven, strangely.
but he was used to that
he was used to seven stars
and silent singing,
somnambulism and personification
his bookshelves kept on laughing
at him.
he didn't know why.

so when he fell to pieces
he wasn't surprised.
only uneven.

some days were better than others
before the fall.
he had winters, springs, summers
and sometimes leaves change color
at the end of summer
so his life was pretty much normal.
except not.

in retrospect,
looking back beyond deep dark holes
and downward momentum
newer, normal worlds -
glancing circumspect
to catch it before it ran away -
life before the fall
was not normal
it wasn't normal at all.

but he kept on growing.
he couldn't help it.

looking up, with two broken legs,
the boy felt very small.

his legs healed
and he got up
and he walked
on, and on,
and on and on
and on and on
until someone
got tired of
making him
walk.

it wasn't that he couldn't stop growing.
he couldn't stop walking.
and he knew there was an answer
a reason. he knew.
it was like a puzzle, only
he loved puzzles. and he didn't like this.

three years later, after he had
grown for three years,
he jumped -
first his lips,
then his torso,
then his everything else.
it was kind of like a puzzle.

so he tried to reassemble himself.
sometimes it worked,

and sometimes he only thought it worked.

chapman and the three-pronged approach

how can you believe in so much rage
that burning veins and burning hands
do nothing for your sense of sorrow
that the glass houses we've built around ourselves
are no excuse
we searched for miles
but we couldn't find a vein
with which to put you down. talk
about survival instincts.

shelly or sheila

savagery is no excuse for vagaries
incessantly, incandescently i will pull
all of these words into a glass-like world
trees so fragile that fall causes a ripple
and then a whole lot of ripples, and then
one of those big-budget movie explosions

good thing it's almost winter.

what i mean to say is that i finally
understand what it is to want
certain things, velvet things
metaphorically, of course
because in my deep-glass world
they do not exist
and sometimes i want to cause a ripple.

the last few thousand

cold few hairs, it's november and i'm wearing shorts
i am known for my brevity
my bouts of wit. i am known for
turning puddles into ponds.

sea-side, beneath october sky
i never dreamed my eyes could raise so high
the one thing about working here is
the sunsets, and the smiles.
i guess that's two.
sit me down in a corner and make me
repeat the same two words.

sometimes all i need is a kick
sometimes all i need is a kick
sometimes

leaves fall farther than god will let
them, and i don't know how but they do it
and suddenly my shoulders decay
my arms decay
my heart decays
until all the king's horses and all of his men
put my body together again

troponin

so here we are, tangled

and wobbles on my lip all shout for
brand new, brand new teeth and
shiny white year. i want so much to fall
and i am, i am and it's hard to
figure out where i stand
this is a marsh

centuries of emotion diffuse to the top
epochs of disaster, plaster, grace
shattered and recycled until
god knows what brings me back to earth
thank you for inviting me
it's nice here

the seven seas gave me seventy days
to run through my grave
and pick up the flowers and scatter them
all over again, so i did and didn't realize
that on my wedding day i'd be
wearing plaid

i can still smell your morning hair
and i wouldn't have given that up for anything
is that stupid? yes, it's stupid.
and i start to shiver but i wring my hands instead
a steady twitching in my heart like
someone tried to make it start
take away the ether and put me in my shoes
i want to run to you.

below new york

we make things bigger
like pluto and dogwoods and
pulling apart file-cabinets, we
deconstruct our pasts
and fill them in with stories, horrors
houses with faces and mirrors with none
and my rear-view mirror revelation
seems so fitting, so right.
this time, i won't let it go

like the nato phonetic alphabet
and a certain failed attempt at playing
the devil's advocate.
misty, overcast, and beautiful all here in
some sort of glossy dream
but it's not, and your face is creased
and smiling, and i am thinking of the future

what i mean by this is
go home safely. and when you get there
please smile every day.

waiting rooms are always so

my walls seep stanzas
seem so ancestral some days
and brand-spanking-new others
back in the summer, warm sun,
abandoned abbeys and
abandoned rooms
never waiting never moving on

optimism keeps touching me
as if it knows me well
i won't object

this silly smile has a mind of its own
it is a waiting-room smile
warm sun in my solar plexus
let's paint it yellow so it will shine
let's poke it so it will laugh
one day i'll laugh

sinister somnambulism some days
some days not.
so i guess that's how it goes
unknown, winter leaves blown
blasted buds and those that grow
stick 'em all in a salad tosser and
see what blooms
sitting, grinning like a fool
waiting rooms are always so

so.
okay.

is this normal

every day like a phone call parade
we will walk, we will talk of
michelangelo and when the nothing,
like crows on a wire, calls out
i will think again
of sleeplessness

the pot, it boils and i
boil over. my cup
overfloweth

when the moon rose high the last time
i was ready for the pink smoke
that slips between the wires
every time i start to tire
and it brought me up again,
lifted me.

and only now is the seed of something strange
foreign material, foreign policy
trying to invade, to coil black and red
against the ethereal ever that lies in eyes
and, frankly, i am strange
i cannot not let go
my nervous shudders are back
my clothes are all on backwards
and insurance is nothing when it comes to
smoke and mirrors, curtain calls, fishing rods
and current issues.

my cup overfloweth, and the pot,
it boils. and i
boil with it.

so let us go, you and i
let us go. we must, you know. we must
let us go. relax. breathe. we must just be
only i can't stop thinking of the crook of your neck
you crook, beautiful crook.
let us go into whatever happens and let go
when the sky is awake and alive
like a patient jumping from the ether.

the ability to buy porn

weirdly inverted windows
the light sucked out and the breeze
falling in, summer morning winter night
keep me falling, i am beholden to some
raindrop on the sill of the passing train
beckoning, beckoning just beyond
the stolen words and silent
smiles and breathless recitations of almost,
just beyond all that i am truly
at peace

so we run

yes we do
on cellophane walls and
sticky phone calls, navigating
seas of emotion all for one
and one for every moment i live
tell me every song lyric isn't truthful
tell me shooting stars don't grant wishes
and i won't care
for once, i won't
let sleigh bells ring, let us lose ourselves in
tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow
god on a rock a year ago and a day
my wishes are nothing to reality

hypochondria and anticipation

deep in this red-gray autumn
looking out over newer shingles fading black
a lark sky, a wet road
inside every part of me i feel a
whisper.

the strange thing about phones

mighty opposites, mon frere
situational aphasia
every time i talk it comes out
garbled, fumbled and i want you
so much to understand what i feel
i dreamed of silent minds
everything cracking, not making a sound
until the wire hits the ground
and i jump
i jump at a pin-drop
start at your night-black pupils
staring into mine

not to interrupt, not to domineer your time
it's so hard not to take you up
so i fall off of cliffs waiting
icarus and i, we're tired of waiting

and suddenly i'm always scared

desperate new lives on three kinds of bread
choose your poison, rum, whiskey
killing pasts and opening presents
and beating down doors
to get to more, so damn tired all the time
but i run, run, run because i'm not
i'm not. it's true. placebos can be
beautiful sometimes.

if snails see the benefit then i'm not fit
to listen in, i'm no fly on the wall
i see only fall, spring, winter, autumn again
and man is it beautiful this time around
only i feel collapsed, congealed
like everything happy happens in lumps
and everything good
is almost never me

but sometimes it is, too
so you're a perfect reminder

praise for apollo, god of desk lamps

you make it hard
to see outside
vertical lines, horizontal
lines. the pale shadow of five
four, three, two
zero for effort and ten for hope
i do a lot of hoping.
so when i look at you, finally
really look, i mean
i hope you don't take offense
if i study your eyes
first, and your smile last
it's just habit, and
i guarantee you
i'll be smiling, too.

so far

i've always played with double
entendres, yellow-bricked roads
have swept me away
this night is falling quickly towards
dawn, and oh, honey, your cigarette burns
brighter than your eyes
suddenly i want to see that spark again
cloudy skies, though. stormy lies.

i am a virus, and you are, too. we're a pair
of homewrecking, smiling scripts
and i wouldn't have it any other way

and as much as i don't see you, i miss you
every day, every way. sometimes i sit
behind trees and listen to crows
in the garden of egypt
far off, far off.
and the sky just sits and laughs at me
imitating better painters
better sunsets and different years
there are five windows in my room.

these things feel so abandoned

so forgetting a year or two
around here is like losing a pill
or two in the sofa, they'll show up later
they'll all go stale, they'll change you
hurt you, turn you into a disease-ridden
mirror-image of what is right
the people who could set me right
just fall off the map, left and right
so i write
every fucking day.

another pointless thought

familiar music, iron times
roads going nowhere and i am
on them, twenty-five eight
i always give the extra one
mile, push
i always end up in
between the lines, and the lines
end up on either side of me

there a lot

when i rise with the sun
you show me how to sleep
these veins are open, my heart pours out
when i tire and wither, i'm tired
and i'm withered, and the promise of more
hangs like dew inside my mouth

just to see one simple fleck, i'd have
to run a hundred miles
but i'd do it, yeah, i'd do it in a day
it's not a problem, or a trouble
for a marathon-man like me
i take the bait and do it every time

so i guess here's what i'm asking:
is this blood here real or plastic
i've been victim of synthetics time before
we are frames along a hallway
and it's hard to see things your way
all square and neat and never known before.

shivery silence

well, that's strange

first time in a thousand days

the city of night is the city of lights

waiting up, waiting up for

runner-ups, downtown screamers

uptown streams

i am the great reliever

god, relieve me of everything

not fit for duty, not set for war

a thousand days in the city of night

smog and smoke and breaking light

fitting, fading, reading wrong

my days are short and my nights are long

a thousand smokestacks and a thousand songs

not anymore

lying still, i hold my heart up high
it glints like flecks of gold on a summer night
pink, orange, blue
and i feel it beat and complete its
task in the moist sweat of my hands
and i feel warm, for once
pinks and blues and reds all
hugging me forever

i never knew how much i loved the wind
sensations never bothered me too much
lying still, i hold my heart
and let the wind wash past my hands
and feel the pain, the smiles, more
everything is alive

i met a man of fleeting fancies
his name was me, a strange name indeed
he told me all my world was cracking
he told me, "better get your glue and broom"
i didn't, didn't listen or reply
and now i feel the grass smile on my neck
the sunrise, sunset fall upon my face
lying still, i hold my heart up high
tell all the world
"go on, do what you will."

... processing...

what might i do with today? shiver for the cold
deprive myself of sleep, of love, of grins
(only for the mirror, now, dears)
burrow deep down and sip my tea in
moist earth, swallow a coffin whole
because i'm going to eat my words one day
who knows what i'll digest
god, i don't
i don't know

cansado perro bien

not pretending, not leaving
simply being is a task
i am a hypocrite
i am bile and crime
you are my mirror, you
draw me in dirt. from mt. olympus
from way on high, we weren't meant for this
i know that we weren't meant for this

and heathen saviors, innocent damned
they all screamed for
broken eggshells
but they found no glue.
i found no glue.
this isn't arts and crafts, honey
so put your crayons down
eat them
melt them into torches and pitchforks
they weren't meant for this
but they'll do.

everyone else's college process

i can become you
and it's strange that i can wear your skin
with such ease, inhabit your sinews
and pretend, just for now, that i'm secure in this
i am spreading my success across mountains
and i will let you float out into the ether
become my personal victory
then, when i am alone on the operating table
staring up at my vivisectors and praying
i will have some modicum of hope
that you, at least, will bear my thoughts to the height of your creation.

the last thing you ever wrote

walking home on a tuesday night comes with such doubtful sanity, such strange correlations
if i wonder what you're doing and wander halfway home, if i play my old self if i sing my old song will you come back? i doubt it more than me.
and here i am, rubbing resin into my wounds, lighting fire, bending spoons with
all sorts of doubts and frowns, but most of all i'm angry that you ever pretended to be my north star. you are charybdis. so i'll sail the other way.
this feels so posthumous.
oh, hamlet, would you mourn for the fallen pretender? would you shout, "seems, madam?" even before she quit herself of the innocent robes? no, i think you would have fallen for it as hard as i have. you would have drowned in regrets, but you would have fallen hard.
walking home on a tuesday night, looking forward thinking back, spliced up lives all in my head. i've had my thoughts, my heart has bled.

poems past, years ahead

trailing blood
like pendants on a
chain, dripping water
in my sink. i think i'm
lost, i think i'm scared
i don't think so much
these days
the water's colder
anyway

this is my cave
surrounded by my letters
this is denial, this is
no better
than a whisper of a
doubt, let me in
then push me out
i am dried up on the shelf
in sand and paper, gasoline

like fallen dreams, fallen soldiers
in the grass (in the past)
my new life is
kind of bloody, kind of
faint

the poster child

tonight was fogs and sunsets, emptied plates
wet shirt, wet nails and a couple of suds
comrades in aprons, arthritic spines
tonight was fine, tonight was good
clouds on april years ago. i wish for
good luck, good food
don't ask for much
tonight was higher, higher up

secretory secretaries

sabotage my excellent colors
energy transferred like streets to a sign
wandering whimsies all caught up in
lesser affairs, sentries to servants
and servant to bears
i dreamt of flagella and they
they took me inside myself
the brought me flowers for my pains
and worked me into putty so i would stay
strong in the face of
imminent immigrants, send them back home
to where? i couldn't care but who is a friend
(that's a joke in case you don't understand)
senseless sensations and bedtimes abound.

submitting forms

they say form meets function
in cells and in the world
i say we've reached the junction
of graveyards and of fools
somewhere in this twisted cycle
a smile's bound to just appear
call it spontaneous combustion
or apathy gone wrong

the strangest coincidence

i've been mixed up in morning dreams
too long to say goodbye
i feel destined to find sisters in the cracks
let's paint our faces yellow, and
run through city hall
let's move along and cover up our tracks

deep october, slush inside my boots
the snow came earlier this year
i'm not searching for answers
the clouds will bring me home
the cars will pass and pages
will return

i'm missing birthdays, missing friends
yellow lines are pushing me along
i drive and drive until i find an end
in carolina, maine, or new orleans
so let's paint our faces yellow, and
run through city hall
the answer doesn't bother me at all.

the bravest man on earth

deep autumn leaves, red like me
sit outside my sill
a reminder of crisp air, swallowed fears
the light at the end of the horizon.
unfortunate tornadoes seemed
to break the backs of better men
tearing plains and valleys
in their wake
but as i wake the sunset
seems to pull my deepest winds
from here and now to
back to where they came.

whimper

can't, sold it out, broke it down
moving like contusions
collusion of confusion and we all
just want to kiss our own selves dry
self-despising paramedic
hold me up until i get it, doesn't matter
if i live or if i die
it matters when i go and where and why

(don't worry, this is not a suicide)

so i'll save my breath for breathing
and my heart will keep on beating
if it matters i will care
and keep the faith, no i don't
give a damn about space
textured colored roofs have gone to waste

signal to noise

we're all just looking for a ricochet.
contorted, every day i sit like a pretzel
waiting for a ping. faint
whispers
get going, get on task
focus, focus. and i can't,
because i'm waiting for my ricochet.
don't worry, i won't let it go
to my head.

crochet a cliche, why don't you.

lilac, sunrise. when did fall stop being
pumpkins, golden roads?
when did i get here, there is no song
to prove me right
hide inside my binary fate
the faint glow of twelve o'clock
rolls around again, sweat waiting
to well up in my forehead, chin
i am no twenty-five thousand winner
actor, poet, writer
so all i have is this paper bag
called next year and i shove it on my head
and kiss the mirror
wish it were a window to tumble out of
into fictional cities with laundry, golden roads
and pumpkins.

god, i miss myself.

the "gn" in cognac

silvery sweet, slips and slides
like piano-players' lies
string me along, kid, do it.
force me out of my whine and dine
on my celebrated bones, runes
tombs. most of the best live hard and
die well but i'd like to do the opposite
save the world from some fucking terrorists
or something. step outside for a
breath of fresh air and disengage
the safety, fire a few rounds into the sun
just a few. the rest i'll melt into
animals, souls, fiends.
my ammo will be your queen.

among the characters

i haven't read act two yet
but it feels as if my life hangs by
a thread. spiders are weaving my fate.
so, so thin. there is work to do.
there is work to do and i am not doing
it. does that make me bad?
so many questions i've never had to ask.
i believe in god, but i'm not sure he believes
in me. because for all my deep reds,
endless roads, for all this he has given me
a weak heart and a will to match.
grey matter, grey area, grey skies tonight.
the world turns ashy as i test my sight.

my saturday night

visited two answering machines
of feuding friends. neither inspired words.
canceled plans and picked up flowers
in the yard while whistling "dixie"
to my dog. it's eight-nineteen and all is wrong.
in the driveway a streetlight shines,
apoplectic bulbs seem to greet night and i,
i watch from my window and dream of
autumn. not this fall that tumbled down so suddenly
but great big orange leaves spinning above my head
garage bands, road trips, halloween.
maybe next year.
the herb garden smells like piss.
i'll chalk that up to the dog, smell something
else, and move on. the grass is mowed
its edges squared.

halloween

the power lines lead to alcatraz
five hundred generations of fear
and after one short car-ride
thousands of years of morals
vanquished, speaking of what is
and what was
time, my friend, is out of joint
deep reds, deep
deep reds.

things peoples' mothers say to them about boys

i passed other gods and goners today
brain-cell, stem-cell dreams dissolved
into underhanded gestures
over-shadowed eyes.
each one of us is a probable future.
it occurred to me suddenly like
the changing of the guard
that adam and eve even give a damn
and that's what makes us gods and goners
different.

the coursing of my blood matched perfectly
the cursing of the bell at
two-sixteen. flat, violent, short.
i will write another protest song when my
days are short and my years are long
and in the dead of winter i will pass once more.
these hallways will be old and worn,
sold and born-again.
because my cells are eternal.

i wrote the same damn poem today
baseball, midnight fantasies melted away
i was left with bombed-out veins
smooth liver.
i am thirty years down the road and wondering.

en cambio

bright red flowers on my chain-link fence
peek over the metal, over my sill
i have gone sterile from waiting
for deep-red leaves and orange trees
now shakespeare alone
can pull me out of this spandex womb
and bright red flowers are only scarlet
not more, not more.

an unappealing turn of events would make me sad

some people are meant to live lessons
capsized boats, electric tracks
tracts of overgrowth this could be
an unweeded garden gone to seed
this is what it is to be
kicked out of eden
still clinging to the tree

i feel act five duplicity and i am
not yet there
act one was a blur and
my author was going through an identity
crisis.

in this stanza stands the resolution
but i'm feeling no revolution today except
maybe a quick word with mister doctor
navigate my way back to sub-base one
innocent eyes on sliding floors
i want to go to reno
with all sixteen of you. keep me safe.

great expectations

my calloused post seems ineffective, i am
sentry to the stars. they give me life
when i am darkest.

no stars tonight. the cutting-room floor
is shifting, abandoned mont st. michel
i could see you thousands of
years empty, ghosts in unobserved
sanctuaries. and i could feel your lower
lip like it was yesterday.

things are never righted, they are controlled.
and it leaves me feeling like gatsby's funeral
observed and unattended
when you're dying in america at the start
of the millennium
you are alone.

must be why i cling so hard to hope.

failing that, run

hypertension can shake apples from
their trees. in the dead of night, i write
love songs for chewed up cuticles
un-cried saltwater (swinging in reverse)
un-dropped courses. still waiting for that
pick-me-up. you laughed but it never took.

so i'll crawl back to elsinore, i guess.
second time in as many days
but i just don't feel poetic enough
for calculus, physics, economics
and quite frankly they can fuck themselves
if it means a quicker way from here to there.

crooked moonshine

less and less easy to be vulgar.
real men don't listen to
hamlet, paradoxes and
think they're true. believe me i'd
rather stare headlights in the eye
than end up bedside, night-light.
couldn't sleep last night,
i have a hunch it was you scratching
at your cage (my frontal lobe)

chapter one said, "show yourself"
and i tried but the pages turned up blank.
so no, i don't know where i'll be in
ten years but i bet a part of you will be
dead, because a part of me is dying, too.
i am filling up with corpses.
the epilogue will see them capture
my last breath.

elsinore is house to so many shut up humans.
i keep it in my hands and wring it
to make sure there's any water left.
i'm running out.
i'm drinking paradoxes and bad advice.

sailor

so he replaced his retinas with gaping
wounds and asked me, "can you see?
i only want you to see"
but i told him the scars were
not worth my pains, i must preserve
sit in stasis because one step might
pull me under

two-step, we danced through bleeding halls
in search of cars and bars and gravity
dreadlocked, dead-bolted
to extinct notions of forever, nothing
goes on that long

so i told him the risk was not worth the
gain, but maybe it only looks like
that from this side of the glasss

and it's true, i'm scared. a pattern of doubt

the great philosophers

darker still, my reflection on the glass
sore eyes, sore gums but
i don't give a damn, i'm waiting for
amber filter on the windowsill
autumn morning and jackets
jack-o-lanterns, driving long roads and
not caring. i'm still waiting for that

and when it comes, i'll
be here. waiting.

and i hope you will, too
be here, waiting like my chain-link fence
for me

that's what i hope

vietnam

i wonder if you check this anymore
now that we're in different states
of mind, or if life is moving
too fast to follow, because i feel
so slow

i wonder a lot
and it's mostly about you
about whether you'd approve
i don't hope this is goodbye
but the mirror on the other side is
spinning way too fast
i know i'll come in last if i try to run

24 hour clock

seconds never passed so slow
as when i first laid eyes on the corpse
of a well-rounded student
yelling, "i want to fall flat
on my face"
he took me by surprise
i was just washing spots off
the bathroom mirror

stranger, you in all your wide-eyed glory
make me want to give it all up
for something more
but i'm a helmer, a son, i don't know
where more is
or if it's even meant for me
teach me to destroy, if that's what you call it
but teach me. i need it

the chain-link lunch line
strangled me
turntable troubles pulled me into
relapse, overlapping thoughts
underlying groans
and every second passes slow

stranger allegedly slaps crying child

i have turntables in my collarbones
washed out streets (metaphor for me)
wearing muscles around my neck like a
panic attack noose
red rover park ranger, do you read
i'm alone on the moon and i
i need your signals
turntable shoulders, i'm wound up tight
scoring on my bones from all this
goddamn scratching, i see my skeleton sometimes
from the hubble telescope and it looks so
tiny

there are turntables in my head
they won't stop turning

temperance.

when chinese fortune and fever
fall apart into wishes, watches
we're watching clocks and running on
glue, when all this happens
and i can't be near you
it tears me to pieces

it was just a molar but i always
pictured some bearded scholar whispering
stardust into my eyes
the flashlight took it all away

when dreams of tables and crimes all
drip into the back of my throat
and there's nothing to do but groan
when all this happens
i will run out my cave, regardless
of the pain

eight

hey friend, there was that song
i know it got annoying but not
a word of it was wrong, i've got your back
i've got your front
i've got your smile stitched into my brain
i've got your six
i've got your twelve
i've got your three, your nine
i'd catch you if you fell

so friend, stand back up
there are knots in my stomach
but it's nothing compared to us.

crisis lady

deep reds, swimming in altruists
i understand so much and my head just hurts
let's drop this solo act, i want so much to
drop this solo act
we're only happy when we hurt

no child, no father, no son
we are no roles, rosy flesh and less-than-human
cretin, we are conflict and metal and rust
pinks and greens and blues make us so, so
grey

i don't want a hug
i want just to think, can't you see
deep reds can only bring us together
only deep reds
we are the family in the freezer
bring us to trial, we're only happy
when we hurt

let's drop this solo act
please

bees and craters

but right now, the world seems off-kilter it's
like sinking without giving up
running out of chains and cuffs and
falling flat on pins and hairs, i
sleep so easy on days like these
but it's harder now to speak

and when i gave the world to you i expected
not to want one too, good
plan but now the sky looks nice and
i just want to break this ice that
sticks to our tongues

these nights are never young

statistic reassurance

usurped, bent and i am the old king
the future king but not for now

retrace my steps to the very point of delusion
i will find me dressed in wonder at the
state of sterling silver affairs
it seems nobody is loyal in these long, hot days
but it seems wrong

i can have my cake and eat it, too
but so can you
and that's what keeps me on

the treasurer of new london

so much less a child now that i have
pains, brains, fiscal gains, ground-up knuckles
and nothing to show but a few shows
in which i play the fool, part 1
the lover, part 2
and the less-than-human believer

sometimes i walk in new shoes just to
see a new sky, it's weird like that
all the colors are neon on main street tonight
but i can't see two inches past my own two eyes

i am no longer a figment
but i'm not quite real
and it's strange to hear knocking, ringing
beeping and such.
so much less a child now that i am me.

things i've never had

biting shingles to keep myself sane
i feel splinters and squinters who see
through my eyes and into my
red-colored brain and i rot, i curdle
to keep myself sane. it's easier
to be rotten than to live in your name

we're all fighters at some point
but we don't know our game
and the red-colored humans who stomp out
our fears, they are running and jumping
to take all the blame and
god dammit i'm not letting you have it, it's mine
i will fight for my right to be a bad human
i will dance in the streets 'til you
beat out my brain

i lie at night like i do in the day, kid
it's habit and i hate it and i want just
to change but hey, i'm a winner so i will
get there one day but you know right now
i'm just drinking rain
and it's hard, real hard to live on just that.

nighttime birds

so we wrapped up our smiles
and soaked them in wine and we
we told all our friends that we're
just doing
time for the airplanes and
children to fly we are
looking at the future and it's
making us sore

you know, mother was watching when
we came home that night and
she picked up her matches
and set us alight
and it's weird 'cause we're burning
but i don't smell smoke we
found our own reasons and
managed to choke
you down

so here's to the stars
and the window between us
if it weren't for the glass, i'd never
have seen us.

thinfilm

you feel far away
they call us cellophane friends we
talk through the nothing
and bounce back the light
you are some other place
with squares and boots
and everything is hard, hardened
cut and dried and
right

so do i
i feel difference in every
consistency, blade of grass
book, cheekbone
torn from comfort into familiar
and my mind won't make up
new worlds, dimensions
it used to
but it is already
somewhere else

so wrap me up
asphyxiate me if you can
and you can
but you won't
because thin film friends
are still friends, and
brothers still share blood. strangers
cannot give up.

and that's what this is.
stranger.

bedroom singing

i can multi-task and do
nothing at all, comatose stranger
empty halls and corrugated lifestyles
ups and downs, that's me
i want to walk down to the beach and
baptize myself in sand
but i can't stand without a
crutch

so i'll clutch you in a dream

the analogy to rabbit.

i can read, but not that
dawn-red pages
and i'm already awake, asleep
at the wheel, running through fields
can't shake what we feel

my ribs are sore
from breath

and i wanted you to live
beyond your dreams
on strange two feet
but you never will
even on four
you will run
run

and run some more.

wonderwallflower

i do not feel infinite
clear skies tonight, endless rings
of lighthouses calling us back
forward
i do not feel sad
only troubled

they said we would find ourselves
in the mirror on sunny sundays
and we believed them, which
is funny because
they were wrong
and we didn't
so we sit on walls and wonder

the north sea seems so
close, between you and me
waiting to shipwreck us all
and this is a secret, isn't it?
we have nothing left to wreck
but we will do it anyways.

advil mental

it takes a year or two to
pop a pill or two
'round here. the frames of broken
windows rain from everywhere
and i sit on park bench waiting
come on, kick me out
so you kick in
i'll be a reliever, relieve everything
if you will dance, i will sing.

dulcet

came late to the party
abandoned mont saint michel
stony hillside lust and
ran across two lovers holding back
to back
top forty hits
bruises all over
told me to get over it, live it up

papa

i know you died a while
ago, and i know he was your son
but i'm looking up for someone
else to help me right on through
i'm buckled up and ready to serve
ready to serve

being last (or, jb and jk)

tinsel sleeves, bruises on your
arms (or is that makeup?)
and vodka, redemption is a second away

from all the twisted heaps we
become, i'm the one on the bike now
riding straight towards some windshield
and i know just what it's like
to want to prove a single point

i could cut off all communication
like some twenty-first century shutdown
pull the covers over all of the headlights
pretend i'm driving at night
but i'm not, and i want out
just so long as it's me that does it

i guess i'm doing it right.

warm water friend

oh, life
it's a casting off
but i'll be damned if i am wrong
from where i stand you look so
long, kids, we all look so wrong
call it fame or fortune, we
just don't belong
in the same frame, i don't play games
i gave them up for you
it's funny but it's true

the darkness

it's true, the users gather here
once or twice a night and take
what's left of sacred, steal into my
mind. i

left my mind in cellophane so
maybe they could see, you see?
but they paid it no mind
and kept on snatching, pulling at
our cuffs

but it now occurs to me
the users are the used, empty
coke cans and condoms and
they can't help it if they're empty
shit, who can?

so i believe in the beating of a heart
because i've seen it
and even though i've also seen
empty eyes, empty smiles
there's alway blood left to spill

and that's good,
i think.

no air

stasis, like six-year-old me's jell-o
stuck to everything and
sweet but sick. just jump already
if you can muster it
your eyes can only sink so far
into your gelatin skull before they
disappear. and you'll forget, and take a breath.
and then you'll decompose.

yll

i don't feel guilty
i feel 80 proof vestigial universes
floating between my teeth
i am no alexander
save your laurel wreath
but crown me king of my emotions
for now, at least, and let me have my
philosophies and seagulls and
let them mix, because it's fun sometimes

you are a strange shape
a little pear before we sleep
you are poison, for a little sheep
like me

i am no orphan, even after what we said
nobody forced me into
curiosity, nobody's dead so
please don't ask, i have no meaning
so take this blame that has no place
and give all my hope away dear god
i hope i feel like this in two day's
time

crows again

transform me
you wouldn't be the first
sunset eyes, your grace
is in your mouth, a little
sticking out
but i can handle myself
these days

black letters, falling
through your feathers
you all tell me your stories
and i know
they're just as good as mine
and mine all feel like lies

it's a little weird
to walk inside a mind

oh, friendly fire, you
sit so comfortably between
the worlds we all see
and i can't begin to claim
you for my own
but i want to
sometimes i think i ought to
but i'll never know what's best

it feels so comfortable
here inside your chest

transform me
you wouldn't be the first
it wouldn't be the worst
and i know i'll come to love it
as i always do

i wonder if i even exist

i've been living in this
state of disillusion, it's a
good state for losing the solution
it's a way out, friends, that's
all it means
like a red scare, i'm eating
my own body, through the
metro i see you and your hobbies
it's not that i'm lonely
i just don't know where to find you
don't cry, don't even lift a finger
i'm a buried child
i'll give you time to figure
that one out
until then, keep on reading poems

get righted

i understand you less as
the days get longer
like our teeth, like our hair
even i like a good fist in
a bad face or the wrong winner
for the right race, and i know
absolutely nothing about the future
other than the fact that i know nothing
but i still hope for the best
whatever that means

out of sync

sometimes i ask who i am
to a window, or a mirror
i can't tell the difference sometimes
sometimes i stutter because i'm happy
or because i'm afraid of your
sunset eyes

sometimes i'm guilty of everything
and it doesn't matter who did
what, said what and meant it
i mean it every day
sometimes i can't beat that out of me

there's really no punching bag in my room
but i pretend sometimes, and sometimes
i just punch walls, flimsy walls
because there's nothing to hate
and sometimes i need dichotomy

sometimes we are two sheets of paper
that can't hold onto graphite
i am stained with yours, not quite
aligned, not quite right or wrong

time bomb

i could fall for seconds
before i hit, i'm
that nervous around your
voice, don't worry, kid
i'll shiver for a while

if i felt young again
would that be good? because
i do, and it feels like
going bad

i'm a kid rebel
i am underwhelmed
if i look for trouble
know i cannot help it
no, i cannot help it

may 26, 9pm: CVS

like i say, i barely
recognized your face
when you toppled from your
shelf, caught up in yourself
crying for some food some rest
some piece of goddamn sanity.
your apartment's the down the street.

i guess you relented
from your eyes, they looked so glazed
though your hair maintained its
shape through all the crying
oh, the aisles look so small
next to an elephant this tall

how are you? i wish i knew
sometimes i think you're
crying down the room, it turns
out laughter but it
scares me nonetheless
twenty-one years and i don't know
where you live

you took your bottle
of magic little pills, so i
hope you eat your fill
and at the register you opened
up your eyes

guess i'm prolific

i am
string cheese, strangely
it's not the first thing i'd think
but i'm peeling apart like
an orange from its peel

it's not nausea or coronary
call the coroner
he'd be interested in
this skeleton of a school

real

nowadays i'm so wordless
it's like i'm crushing
syllables and sunsets
into parables and lies
i don't know who to hate, nobody
everybody's second-rate
because i can't admit i'm inches
past the line

(one two three four.
who's left,
what's the score?)

we're dropping like flies, like hammers
you're sinners, bathed in glamor
and i can't find my lines
i keep losing life in rhymes

nowadays the roads all cross
like dreams unsure of living
and i can't, i can't
even tell you what i feel
somehow it should be special
but it's not

(one to zero,
you versus me)

lilac roadkill blues

yeah the road it opened up to him
and swallowed half his
mind to take the test
on behalf of all the rest
and he just went on living, living
like a fool

and the songs they hollowed out
they left him high and dry
like all the rest
to take the test
of whether he could find, find
a better sky

so he left and took his clouds
and his old forgotten shoes from
last september
remember
you gave him half a flower
just because

and he got back in for curfew
just in time for one more drink
remember
last september
back then he didn't think

get lonely

i had this vision
i was underneath the ground
and the world came to meet me
but it didn't make a sound.
when the doors
finally gave way
there was no one i could see
not one familiar face.
so i opened windows, and i
turned the fan on loud
just to swallow all the silence of the crowd
they went down smooth
like crows
oh, nothing wants to grow
not with rain, or sun
or salt

my little light

and these signs, they're all blank
like the checks i must sign, here
take my life
take my friends, take my brain

it's like being forced to burn my throat
with all your stomach acid
i've got no pensieve and i
i can't remember all your minds
and i'm failing forty subjects just to stay in line

and i
i can't write poetry when i'm sad
because what i want i never get
and half of me wants to let you go
because the other half is scared

so it comes out like this

i guess i'll jump on this band wagon

yell around for twenty miles
our little lights all cut our smiles
under eyes that want for rest

television playgrounds, washed up lives
over-believers, god we're self-deprived
only for others, watching this mess

not so bold

if skies can change from rain to snow
why can't i see down this road?

reception rock

no, i don't want to keep on
reuniting with these things
without you all
i don't want to see my ship leave harbor
and i sure as hell don't want to
be the one to call it back

guess i'm the sap.
(but you know, mountains speak
better than circuits).

rain, torso, fire

you feel like a felony
and i'll fall down next to you
if i have to, roll down to meet you
curl up to prove i can do this
while the rain meets my feet in
great blocks of hesitancy
button by button
a game of expertise
never have i ever lifted my feet

strange, you kept me warm for split
seconds, like fractures
you felt strong and simple
and i'm talking real, real
one plus one and so on
because you could
kumbaya and all, and maybe i stared too
long at your scar

(not that either of us had delusions.
you know, it would have been
a kind thing to do
out in the middle of nothing, a first
for me at least.)

five, maybe six of us packed up like
the kids we are, thinking about
smoke and fire, fire and rain
the year 1980 and pheromones
this is where i get off
(no, not like that.)
twelve o'clock and in twenty
minutes i bet this will all be a dream

it kind of feels like that, anyways

cellar door (breadloaf 3)

when i awake
in twelve different positions and alone
swollen and alone
when somnolence sets me choleric, clustered
i become a sheep, and i'll follow you like a
sheep even when you whisper death in my ear
because your watch fob glints, you see?
and i'm willing to follow your glint even
thought it tells me
time is running out
and i know for a fact where caravan leads.

black box (breadloaf 2)

i could wear you like a pendant
sink into you and take your
linen, corduroy
until you were bare-chested in the dark
until your smile disappeared
and you sighed a lamp out, for me
to see my handiwork
and know that i created you with a hand and
kept you singing in my sternum

blitz (breadloaf 1)

we tried to sink our teeth into each other
but it all came up bricks.
chipped teeth, stale vermouth, your voice heavy with
blame you won't assign
just keep on moving, four-cornered mind
i scratch at you with my eyes but of course you will never hear it.
it's all blue skies, black box, put on a face
does love do that to you?
words skinned at numbed by too many bricks
too many fingerprints clawing for your attention
as if a word of thanks would bring this box
down with us

rock

i am a gutter-dweller, true
but i still appreciate a sunset, dogwoods
and clear water even when it's still
and if i'm singing
well i'm singing just for you

i am off-kilter, under-understood
and half the time it's by my own construct
but i know it and you know it
and hell, that won't change the sky
which we wouldn't even if we could

self-degradation is a lifestyle and a fiend.
it is green-glass tea and self pity
underwhelming over-achievement
my eyes are peeled for introspection
and all anyone ever finds is a poem

but i know wind in my hair.

i always have, i suppose
it's kind of a curse, i lose myself in prose
and i talk too much
about things that aren't quite true
i keep on forgetting to see
what's right beneath my nose.

family theme

we've thrown punches before
go ahead, you owe me one
but i swear to god if you walk out that door
it doesn't matter, nothing matters

if that's what you've become, brother
if that's what you are

we've been to hell and back
(at dammit, that's not a metaphor)
and every day we'd knock one back
because hell, heaven's getting sleepy
and it's so damn strange that angels
would bring us so far down

and you know i'm not at my most eloquent
it's this bloody nose
but you've never had trouble understanding me
i guess it goes to show how far we've come
and gone

the best fight

it's not always this bad.
your eyes may glisten now
but it takes a hero to lift a toe
to toe with the enemy, the veil
to simply live is a herculean effort
i know, but you came out on top

i am a lens, bending time
wondering what lives in your
four-cornered mind, seeing
helping you see
i hope i'm not wrong

crows again. times, they change
so do you.

love is real

partly (moses parting the sea of reeds)
i think i must be sylvia's snake
silver, consuming
that these chords are cords
and my hands are tied, biblical
songs fall into my ears, eyes
i have never tasted steam

but sinai screamed when we lost faith
and we placed our hearts in gold
thinking we had been abandoned
by a biological process, empty of energy
forgetting to stare into the sun

while below, the rock springs water
it flows to nobody (because there isn't anyone)
and nobody drinks it
though i wish he would
hold me, because nowadays he can

still, it flows

not fade away, or so they say
today i believed in god and i listened to flowers
and wanted to drink water
but i can wait
just as long as these chords go on
and just as long as i have a song

yes. you're right.

i keep on hearing things like whispers
in the grey, they say he was
brilliant in his very own way
the eyes all remain
dead-set on horizons, different
and chilling and beautifully plain
how would you like to be
fifty and fading
or left on the side while everyone knows
just how to redeem their life-long calling
or crying, it seems we're the only ones left

but it wasn't blood

five seconds too long, five seconds to
stall, this isn't fog
this isn't my car
metal bedsheets like rope made of
steel, all curled and hurled
through eyes and they're peeled, yeah
but i never wanted it
all i can see is red soda like blood
and smoke through the metal
all curled like nails, this is
five seconds to stop and to think
not to feel, i'm scared and i'm late
and the metal is real

going slowly

here's the thing, i
i don't know where to go
track my tracks down the dimples
of my back. this full-frontal
assault on my full-frontal lobe
i'm just dying to redeem myself
before i'm just some kid
i'm just counting clocks, chewing rocks
waiting to remember

it's not easy to take another picture
when i know that i'll still be here
and you'll still be here
and neither of us will know it
i can't really know
you shoved me into a cold sweat
deep threat, counter-culture kid
my own personal vietnam
these hearts and minds are walking slowly home
and it's sad, but here's the thing:
i don't know.

forgot to breathe

what did you do to
make it so hard on yourself, kid
it doesn't need to be so hard
so why are there tears in seven-p.m. droplets
rainy evening songs?
come on, kid, tell me where
did you go wrong

dylan-voiced, ragged edges
to bring you back to earth
i tell ya, it doesn't really work because
you were never really here,
were you

i love your dry eyes and your
mind, it's good for adventures
there is lots of you i like
but you can't keep the beat

and some part of me won't stop saying
you can't take the heat.

magic 22 (part 2)

in seventeen years, i sit unmarked
pilate, me
i killed you in five different locations
but i killed myself more
and it's not my fault
i keep saying, i keep rowing
it's hard because there is no shore

and this big stupid river, road, whatever
it doesn't matter
faker than fake, cornmeal and flakes
better in words than in song or
reality, give me up to someone, something
but do it before i forget to dream

ten thousand goodbyes, and
this is the hardest.

i dream of the city, the ocean
i dream of arms on mine
i dream of your smiles, words, memories
unsolicited
nothing else

there are only pages and headstones
where we lived, charred smiles
like candlelight lashes
i want to believe, i do
i want to believe in mending a broken connection
love, too. i want to know it all

sometimes. when life hits me square in the jaw
when i accidentally run you over.
only then, but it happens.
i keep on looking at this passenger seat
and i keep on wondering

"who used to sit here?"

and of course, the answer's air
shouldn't i be used to it by now?

flickering freak (part 1)

sometimes. when black and blue sit
in the lipids
(down in the depths)
when i can't bear to smile through you.
only then, but it's enough.

with strangers, it's easy
line 'em up and knock 'em down
knock one back. it's
on me, today
empty bottles and balancing bar stools
i wore my cut-offs
because i am.

so i guess someday we'll meet again
back at the start of this
same dead end
(oh, and thanks again)
and i'll be driving, diving
that's all i am

(i'm a)

heart person

hey missile, straw man
where were you going
on saturday last?
because fire is fire, no
matter why
sometimes we're just soft

endings are hard, you know
i can watch the start
the finish line grows until
four years down
where did we go?

it's world war three down here
this vast, metal life
like boxes, fish bowls, thin film
i could never dream of dreaming big
but i did
i did

they all laughed

i dreamed i was a sunset
in or on your tongue
these sanguine spires calling
from above and
oh, i went to find my future
in the needle of an eye, i let
the voices follow me from grave to grave to

sighs upon the last green valley
smokers traveling in a row
i couldn't find my body in the
cold september snow, oh child
child, give me the benefit of

everything was raining when last i
returned from home, believe you me, child
i can never go
no matter where i wander
these hills all point that way
they catch me, i'm falling

in case you didn't know
from zenith to horizon
but i will never go.

setting

sometimes there is glass between me
splintered off in every grain of hair
and doubt, it's like the world
in your nails, this sun
it hits you just right
because you write it
about as good as it can be

shell-shocked, sea wind
the salt in my bones, it feels all wrong
frenetic, frantic i'm a max i'm a
seaside lunatic these days
i want to feel
do you know how that feels?

it doesn't matter how much salt i see
this part of me wants to love
how many dishes i break
and this part wants to be loved
how many times i try
sometimes it's all glass, all windows
all screens and glares

corn king

strange dyslexia, suffering
mucus mouth
that will bring us back to doe
in the headlights scatter horizon
throat culture of capitalism
sinking through my eyes, my
scratched-cd, dead light dance
telling me, "hey. come back"
but i can't.

something in me shouts
every car alarm awakens
these clouds, they are me and i
i pay you back in guilt

undeserving tulips, undeserving
just write me already
do it once and get it right this time
i am no
baby loan, babbling on
not anymore, not this time, not now
i'd rather not be wrong ten
years in a row
like planted corn, corn king, baby
sinusoidal happy ending
i wonder if he'll be happy at eighty

i've got bugs on my hand
cover all and cover nothing
i'd feel more at home with a bloody rag
dramatizing delirious dilemmas
knowing what's what, what's when
international affairs
but of course, you know
there is no then

it's true. sometimes you are my favorite.
(and other times it's you, or you
or you or you again. multiple sclerosis
brainchild, brainseed grow grow grow
things would be easier if you would just glow)
and then sometimes this all feels
obligatory, purgatory
you are all my judge.

the other one

today, she said we should date
because the line between our eyes
normal to none
behind frail collarbones and
thick-skinned mantis
blurs so beautifully, alabaster eyes

your blaze fits so serenely among the fog.

i sat down inside myself and
pretended to know you for two days straight
but came out alone, at last
just me and nobody
smiling at each other

normal to none
to nothing, i mean
feeling so undamped
uniform, cuniform, under-done
sometimes i mean to say, "you're
my favorite"
but i don't because i never say what i mean.

the sigh in the boy

half of the remaining percent of me
lies for fun
in a park, to your face
a referendum on my future, fantasies
wondering how far up or down
i'll have to stare to see my own hem-line
to know you're there
and if it weren't for you, you wouldn't be

this microscope is limited
to tangible fact
to anchors and ships and seas
not seers
not me
no matter how much i want it to be

and that hurts, you know?
like splintered wood, we go
our own way
we don't look back
it's not my fault i have to see your back

i'm not so sure anymore

i wish i could smell your fear
i want you huddled in your room gasping for air
and ten thousand thoughts running
no, racing through that thick skull of yours
because you deserve to think,
to reap what you've grown on a hot summer day
dry september, october, november rain
the world was swimming when i was born
sometimes i think i'm like a time bomb
ticking away. i knew it, i'm too good to waste
i'll shove you into your grave.
why am i like this? why do i feel violence
every morning, every night, eyes, yes
ten thousand bridges and all of them burning
turntables keep turning but i can hear them stop
mixed messages, minds, tattoos on your eyes, yes
i know you know, somewhere
but you've sterilized georgia, and jersey
one of us will come out alive, alone, a locked
door for a portal, cold sores in your eyes, yes
it's all true one way or another, alien baby or alien brother
the world doesn't revolve
around me or anyone else
it stops
and stops
and stops.

alphabet

free-for-all fire in the hole
like dying, like living undesired
enterprising lovers
this cliff is very steep

and freedom follows sleep,
remember the time when
smiles meant smiles and miles
of heartache were just for fun?
i don't either
underneath and over on the beach
we stormed to see the future
hoping we'd win
(but just because i'm happy doesn't
mean i'm in)

i feel like
age-old languish, re-invent the wheel
cross the demilitarized zone, there's nothing left.

surprise attack on faulty data
intelligence could never prepare me for
many things, like love and life
but i still try (why on earth do i do that?)
i still try,
and it's still hard
but i bet that when the dust settles
over sunset crabgrass, twilight marsh,
i'll still be alive.

the adventure i didn't have

"buddy!" she yelled
and for a second i thought
she was yelling for me, twinkling
eyes, maybe ten
she's very brave, i guess

the best day so far, i thought
and ten seconds later
all i could think of was
help, maybe i should help
it could have been better

(i didn't help, in the end)

a gradient shadow the white
sun can't even begin explain
there are days when
i dream of reading you to sleep
fantasies of remembering fantasy
but up here, at the top of the flue
all i feel are fumes
and i know, i spy downwards every day

and breathe in fumes

the birds

this neck of mine, it
keeps on snapping back
and i keep looking up, obliging
white mist and crystalline
feathered fears, feelings

lately the sky has been descending
so that if i stand up on that cliff
i can feel the world thin
light looks so plain out here, but
it makes me ache

these wings keep pulling me down.
believe me when i say
if i knew how to say it, i would
i would.
something in the air sounds like
new, old, deathly silent songs
stairwells at the bottom of nowhere
this silly marionette has
lost its strings, crumpled

but only for a moment.
now isn't that weird?
this neck, it's mine.

... you can tell everybody

behind your dirt
left of the line, on top of
the world you made
there are two eyes
one is for seeing, and the other
looking

sundrop tears, you think
ten thousand years will cure me
and until then, repent
but i've repented
every day since i made you
out of graphite
and wires

if i told you i cared with a blink,
would you nod?
i guess the moment's too quick.

missing day

i try not to think about
you not here

it's hard. i try to reason
myself into a blanketed corner
and i try to find my tears. at least

here, the ground will catch them.

it only hit me five years ago
but i've always been lonely, reluctant
light has always moved this slow
and now, supernova and
what's left is a hole

the wires swept away my trying
they tied me up in belief
in dreams
but light moves so slow, for me.

who says

soft blue home
like rolling stones, like
self-redemption the skies rolled
on and on and i did, too
i couldn't bear the sight of a mirror
or you

(and to think, everyone else
so loved your eyes, your hair
you litter picture frames from tragic years)

i'm leaving, now
and it makes me sick
i'm leaving to stop me from doing that
but the ocean is one great mirror
and the plane can't turn around
and europe is so far away
will this really make me stronger?

they called me wendy
but i was the one who was lost
just because i once flew doesn't mean
i know my way
never, never again i keep saying
i can't, but i can
and it hurts to know that i need this
but it hurts more to wonder if that's really true

unused essays

i don't know where you are tonight
the boxes all stare at me
from my little light, like a
haunted isle, minced, packaged lives
i could swear i saw the future
in 2005.
i was young then.

someone told me to love my neurosis
it makes me me
good-for-nothing me
but that same man said
"stand up, you are worth that much"
it takes a lot to stand up,
i hope you understand
how can i be worth so much and so little?

this morning, the fog
covered only chimneys
like there was something to conceal in
the topmost bricks of these houses
skeletons in the attic shouting
look up, look up!
but i can't really see. it's foggy.

regression progression

saw you at my will, like you said
my time only
so you could say what
i, being me, never expect
and i could prove to myself
that something exists
beyond levees and electrical currents
and my bones keeping me
well-aware, well removed.

it almost worked
i followed myself home and
laughed and scoffed and
kicked a pebble to pull in the tide
until it was safe to drown
in deep blue when i

had the chance, underwhelming
i know
to plan my sighs
but i have to start somewhere
right?

i guess when i tried to be angry
i could feel this shell aching
for something, something
please

please, let there be something.

triple entente

the whole world smelled of apples
twilight and smoke from a dream
and i did dream, even if
i thought it was hopeless, i did
and i woke up to find
pyramus and thisbe, a play inside a play
the destruction of the parthenon
of personality and pain, because i know
everyone feels the numbness
until the only thing left is our
bones
sliding against each other, alone, and
charcoal wings on the sidewalk
because nobody is watching over and
an imprint; false love
and a bullet for a freckle

which is strange, because i can still feel the wind

the muliple personalities of multiple choice

i had my skeleton drive back
to wander through these halls, to
predict whether i'd be
black or blue (false or true)
by april fool's day, ghastly parade
celluloid hall, alone in a river but
i watch you fall
face-first, and you didn't know it
until the dripping blue caught up to you and
warned you that the atmosphere would swallow
us up

it's hard to lie these days, when
i could see blacks but i always see grey
just a pale shade but i know i'm right
glad you're not me, glad i'm not you
the river was shallow
but it ran so true.

moratorium

i'm just a question
a petty thief
searching for words to explain your grief
and i could write pages of dripping dawn
tightrope suns and
silly schemes
to rid the world of its lesser themes
but i know i'm wrong
these things will haunt us
they will be bedsheets hung on the door
hurricane warnings, silent good mornings
from a silent war
there's no such thing
as a cease-fire, only a play
to forget our lines. call it a treaty
go on with living, or fighting this war.

not fade away

we were left with shells
ragged and crying for closure
and the skies, they heard us and
opened up and the rain felt like fire in my lungs
legions of hate, we'll never die
never fade

it's a lie, and we know it.

i want to kiss the goodbye from your lips
i want to take you back home, find
your favorite stuffed animal and stop you from crying
you're liquefying before my eyes
and all i can do is hope that when you're blue,
i'm still in love,
because i need this reason.

this is not closure.
this is not fair.

(screens aside, i would die in your world
but i live in mine).

save your generation

on perfect film
the way the eyelids on your lips
they open all the way to
see we're never really done
we keep running
sudden exposure in the twilight
sun
it makes the world
move just a little bit

faster. i left my body behind
when i tried to understand
no pain, no fear, because i was afraid.
and i just stared
at those eyes closed on your lips
and knew that when they opened,
the sun would blind them.

what i meant to say was,

i keep on taking the sun for granted
losing ground
sweating too much and it's making the goddamned
polygraph move a bit too much

i could tell myself
it's our thing (and maybe it is)
but it's not a code, i'm not staring at an empty
booth
filling it with self-affirmation
(sleep deprivation
the leaves fall faster than the speed of sound).

it's odd how we dance around
the fact that neither one of us knows what to do
about the fact
that i just like being around you.

1 3 7 (someone called rachel)

from your lips i hoped
for grace, for
hallelujah

i should have known
the discord beneath your eyes
we put so much stock in pupils, but
falling flesh burns better than
rope
and i can see your sleepless nights
inner fights
with nothing but a glance

when i had passions
i was wrong every time
i called love by its first name and
it called me out
and i was wrong
every time.

our lady

out one window burning march
to horizons, belying stars
the other holds a pale new grey
like water, still, waiting for your
alabaster touch
dry eyes aren't worth a dam.
(you know-
sticks, stones, sepia uncleaned bones).

you were charisma
thirty months and every one
a question mark stylishly slashed
on thrashing backs.
you called it a tattoo.
your eyes are a puzzle piece
your voice, a clue

i could hear the timbre before
the ax came down
thirty months of listening
six
for a sound

sweaty hands

my life is
well, chaotic is one way to describe it
the feel of your hair on the bridge of my nose
right before
well, you know.
so this is what it's like to be punched.

only, not.

all my punchy phrases and pithy cries
pleas and please say goodbye
i could be dealing in bones, ladies
watch out
(i would, if i were you.
one day i might use my knowledge of pain to
well, sever my fear of it)

but i'm not.

the moon was the size of your eyes, tonight.
like hers, only she's fiction and
perfect for some guy who's not me because
let's face it,
i'm just not into that.
i could call it sudden clarity but that,
that is a word reserved for sober drunks
i need teeth to describe this.

i don't have them,
if you were wondering.

i see ten thousand roads
and robert frost can go to hell for all i care
because none of them are less for wear,
and this isn't a fork it's a goddamn porcupine
and hey,
i'm stepping on it.

i have a confession:

i hear everything. your words are like candy,
guilty, guilty, guilty
and i hear every word and hell, i know you're right.
but i wait for two hundred eyes to realize it's true.

normandy

dead waters
thirty-thousand sighs
you took me up and strung me
down.

and if i had to ask
i'd ask you why
why would anyone ask for this
oh, dover's cliffs
they sit forever
pulsing sounds of saline cries
you gathered flowers
lilies
why?

my eyes are sloping
two sockets full of love
they cry for water, oceans
wouldn't cure this lust
and somewhere, somewhere in this
cosmic coincidence

i drew the short stick

frozen

i felt like ice long before
you touched my skin
silent words
wrecked our tears, turned them
green with envy two octaves
down, the undertone
saying
"we can never be"

and we can't
but i will remember you,
even if you forget
dreams of ice and candles
lit for goodbyes and hello
dulcet piano
playing softly farewell

december 3

too late
to the party
(one month, to be
exact)
your irish body
strewn about
like
well,
a corpse.

you rogue
i always knew you weren't quite
gone.

season 2

i'd always dreamed
that when my heart broke
we'd cry our way out
home
believe this war is worth love
eternal damnation and hey,
you don't know what it's like to know
flickering dreams, what's stored
inside (this isn't apocalypse,
this isn't what matters)
i'm bad i'm bad i'm-
so, so sorry.
you always could break my heart with a look.

just keep walking.
it only gets worse from here.

(i hate the smell of your fear)

piano key

tonight, the rain has whispers.
smoke curls curtly up my side,
silt drips from my eyes,
tears from yesterday's lullaby.

they said we were a cut above
but i harmonized anyways,
cut a chord out of
broken men who hadn't learned to fly
to walk off the edge and forget to die.

addendum

(and sis,
you were right
it wasn't me
taking flight.)

karaoke kid

your wilting smile fell
on the floor next to all this laundry
signs of disuse (abandon portraits
and all)
it wasn't a lie when i said
i wanted you
but it wasn't the truth
i just wanted my ship to come back to
shore

and i put you on because
well, you matched
and the rest of it was dirty and
old, and sadder
and you wore me out
because
i wasn't who i am.

the truth is that
i wanted you to need me
(to lean on me, even when you
were strong)
and i wanted your smile to be
just for me

i guess that's twisted.

i'd always dreamed of picket fence
lining lives we've led
hero dreams or whatever
strewn about like these clothes,
cast off because
this life is good enough

but i guess i was wrong.
(i fall short
and your smile's too long).

the price

the sky was what i got
for saying
yes

ten steps out and
i meet the apocalypse,
steadily marching army
and beneath it
the moon, silken sky
darker than anywhere i could
possibly run.
(you know, i'd die for fun).

so i'll retreat (or run)
from cycles
and wisdom
and world war two.
but one day i'll fight it
and that one's just for you.

tall grass

a hero dream would be nice,
craggy cliffs and
that moment about the hair
and resolution and
the sparkle on your cornea
that too
while rambling freaks
soliloquize about how much
they loved us
(i mean, me. you never let
anyone love you. you don't exist)
circus redemption and hey
you could run away, if you wanted
but i don't think you do.

thanks, blake

that time i awakened me
you stared ahead so vacantly
i had to scream
but nothing would come out
so i picked up my cliche
and stuffed it in a suitcase,
vowed that i would leave this stupid town.
but i'm back, i guess
and you, you know the rest
it's history like
coal burnt in my lungs.

wait outside my window

i saw you staring
twelve days ago
five days in a row and i couldn't
help but wonder, am i
the messenger or the evidence

blood-red snow like twelve
days ago, come on
looking for a good time?
the piecemeal moments of our lives
just don't fit
snow on the ground
i'd only let lincoln suspend the writ
(not this strange, violent
punctuation)

i don't want to be the one
they see at eight
five days into the week
too stupid to care -
but hey,
that's paranoia for you.

pauli

dear life,
there's nothing wrong
just an empty hand
and ten dollars lost.
i'm addicted to cash,
to doing well.
got a light? go to hell.

and inside your soft remains,
a sister too i saw in you
and we walked for miles wide.

please write me back.
i'm tired of hating,
of jealousy
addiction.
i'm tired

in the winter's when you really know

i am loyal
on the barren wastes we call
big surprise, the world
waits for you.
baited breath for
logic we can only pretend to
see;
the snowflakes fall
around me, one by one they prove me wrong.

christmas one month late,
but now you're here.
therapy
for our bleeding lips
drying hands,
i wish i had more answers.

down the road,
i hope i see you every day.
in the winter,
you really know
a partner's all you ever want to know.

there's nothing left to say

and the bagman falls away
lonely cold and blue-bell flesh,
for a funeral pyre,
it's pretty wet.
so friend, got a light?

we scattered our problems
in central park,
steelworks and skyscrapers and
back home, longview
for your troubles and my headphones
overflow with sine cosine
tangential to the point
but i lack reasoning, i guess

to make this work out in the end.

i'm getting tired of funerals
that aren't mine.
(who's game for soup and hot chocolate?)

christmas lung fungus

so,
this is where the ice-filled anywhere
stops and meets horizon,
where no matter how hard we try,
we rip at ourselves,
we tear us to pieces,
but we always come out alive.

to tell you the truth,
the air up here is so thin that
it might be easier to just
give up.
and if it weren't for the clouds,
the funeral shrouds,
the blood pumping through your eyes -
well, i'd lie and say i wanted to.

in the corner of the couch

sleeplessness is like hypnosis
or alchohol,
intoxicating and redeeming
and it gets me nowhere fast
except for awkward
uninhibited remembrance.

stolen time,
i'm running like a land mine
(that is to say
explosive but stationary,
bound to be underfoot).
do i stumble merrily
eke out my life
like some people that i occasionally admire?
or do i chase abstractions,
try to grasp the sunset with
misunderstandings and twinkling eyes?
there's nothing like believing lies.

for now i huddle
blanketed in snow (and blankets, too)
and content to live with you, you,
and you,
and you.

cucumbers, disheveled egos

snow white would lay
the battle-hardened soldiers
in their graves,
the tears streaming down her face;
that's the way it works.
life is a poison
when i tend towards the worst.

i'll feign grace
for the sake of moving
hoping somewhere
i'm good enough to go ahead.

but if this is my forte -
well, i'll never succeed on the
piano.

this place

rolling down. no, spiraling-
take your candles and your words
and that thing
above you.
i've got my own, and they are
warm, special, mine.

i hit my head on the floor
on the way up.
that's how low i was,
lost in silent sound like
civil war heroes mashed up
with the tall grass.
but the rights ones had the
two-thirds majority this time,
and now clouds are
everything.
and life is beautiful.

i'm alright, really.
i bleed ghost blood, seeping scars.
i hope for love and
please, let me leave.
this place is not my own.

underneath the tree, spring

you once talked of
turning back to find the colors
ebbing up the walls, down
your spine,
chasing you into someplace
you did not want to be.

spring,
years past. those words,
they would be my last.

if i find solace in a flickering screen,
why does the world recede
when i stand on my tip-toes to touch it?

i don't know.
the world seemed so sure, so
knowable,
until i took off the blinders.

raggedy andy

windswept
like your damn smile
piercing contagious,
washed-up drunkard like.

the snow falls as though
1954 sits outside,
flashing lights

and maddening grins.

who wins?

five minutes.
no empress stopped time,
this is no jester's joke.
this is
five minutes,
every second a wrecking ball.

i guess that in the end,
all that mattered
was our smiles.
(still, i can feel your guilt)
.

sun shines black every night

i
i left this land three years before,
i took my clothes
and
i
i dreamed up a pet to love me
unconditionally,
i
i walked for miles alone in your arms,
i thought of crying,
but it seemed too hard.
i
i always wonder why i can't remember
what it's like to feel.
i
i stutter in my sleep, but only because
my bones are so cold.

i'm starting to see

bad poetry is like
the wrong note in the right song,
full of expression
(maybe a bit too long),
crying way too much like the
best friend who's always drunk.
everywhere.

i could sit alone all day and wait
just to live,
alone and unsure.

wait.
just live. i'm sure.

off the tip of montauk point

i never saw the lights
until they all went out.
i never lived until the water filled my lungs.
i'll take my risks,
wring my shallow wrists
until they're blue
and i can smile again at you.

they call 'em rogues

in the somewhere
between my eyes,
lie lots of lies,
wrapped in the mystery of
where did i go?

sandy shores
left to the martyrs to
bury themselves,
parapets flooding with
cigarettes and booze and the like.
i'd drown if i set foot
on that land.

or
broken lands,
a burning strip of sunset
below the confederations lines,
where movie stars walk
with their eyes behind their minds.
i live in bombed-out huts,
stuck in ruts
'til the bureau forces me alive.

where did i go?
among stars and the moon
i've lost me too soon for goodnight.

i wouldn't

it's cold among the sludge.
i can practically touch my
self loathing, inspiration, desperation.
get me out.
it's been so long since you've let me out.

life between bites

you don't even hover
when this happens.
you fall slowly, like sludge.
you grab at the oil on my skin,
you ridicule me from within.

on these nights,
i find myself lying
just to catch some sleep -
escapism in a capsule,
morsel, syringe,
the remnant of brevity
(exclusivity)
and the bitter part of the start
of something new
(i still haven't seen that with you).

i would die for you,
if i needed to.
(and not in some petty way. i would weigh
your mind on a scale and protect you all).

a thousand barrels of waste
(add that to your waist)
and now shower will rid me of it
(except this acid rain)
only you
(but not really)
can pull the sun up again.

inhibitions

the same old song
ringing through the same old flame,
rhyming with words that stick
to the roof of my mouth
like your name, your games
the fun wears away
when i realize how much
i don't know,
like the smell of your breath
in the morning-
roses,
rancor,
whose book is this,
anyways?