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)
.