mom

it was something that i genuinely
didn’t want to do
(communion blew) but it was
all of it really (ugh and the singing)
and i hate that we see
the world so differently
but (you know what)
i should have done it anyway
because i love you
and it would have been good
to do something nice for you
for a change
i’m sorry
i’m so so sorry
for never telling you that enough

and i say this
as if something final
has already come to pass
as if i am dead
or (even worse)

you are dead
but you are here right here
kicking and screaming
with your book
so absopositively certain
that the atrophying pages in there
are more than paper

more than words
more than failed fossils
being manipulated to justify
this kill and this save

and (you know what)
maybe the bottom of the
barrel becomes me
but at least i take
responsibility for my swim with
my slimy newfound comrades
these pagan heroes
left in the corner of an old library
condemned for their
staggering lack of awareness.

guess this is left

there is a cocoon that was on fire
it is smoldering now
rapt with itself
in mourning over the little
pieces of butterfly
deep inside
unintentionally self-aborted
and it asks to be told of spring
fully content knowing it is
a season for some.

the sorry skin you're in

christie’s half full
and it’s four twenty
a.m.

and i’m faced with a dilemma

sleep sounds nice

but then i’ve got this
coal going too
mintlemonkiwi
jesus how do i sleep now
my girl shrugs
the night is young

pat pat
i’m sorry lungs
and sorry skin
you’re in the dark
far too often

just
smoke in a ghost
in the late hours
of a story
that too quickly
grew tiresome.

works doesn't it or SOME BULLSHIT ABOUT FLOWERS

CAN’T YOU DO SOMETHING
what
HAPPY FOR A CHANGE
what i'm busy
I AM SICK OF THAT PATRONIZING
PHILOSOPHY AND DEPRESSING
BULLSHIT
(goddamn) all right sandy
fine

let’s see here
so there were these flowers
right
RIGHT
and they were so beautiful
that no one was allowed to
pick them and they faded
away

AND
well that works doesn’t it
WHAT A TERRIBLE STORY
WHAT IS HAPPY ABOUT
loss
LOSS YES

because it’s the perfect foil
it’s so much
more than that
it’s the enigma of it
the frustrating nausea
of inability to pick the petals
and watch them in the wind
as if they are us
and we are outside looking in
and we can’t
not just (LOOK) at it
and say

wow here is misery
(HERE HE GOES AGAIN)
here is where i should fail
when i've lost it all
where hope should crumble
like lungs under ash
so tired of working under
the unnecessary strain where i
should not get back up again

but they kept blooming right
WHAT
the flowers
RIGHT
and so it's all going to be okay
WHAT

HOW IS THAT OKAY
HOW IS THAT HAPPY
(goddamn)
i mean
because
it has to be.

it was fear

at the heart of it
i think

we just sort of shut down
stopped mid air
just hanging there
as if we gasped too hard

our eyes finally
saw too much
(no that’s not it)
couldn’t bear the sight
of it any longer
(that’s it
it’s a mental thing)

and with one fell shudder
we cast rationality
to the wind
and gave up hope

that flicker
(consistency
you whore)
a lack thereof keeping
us from sleeping

not knowing
if we’ll get up
the next day
and bother

washing our hands
brewing the pot
driving the whole
way back down
the world again

with a sigh
(and a halfhearted toast)
to the bold successors
of our quaint, sad little experiment.

bridge

there is a bridge
over water somewhere
with bricks of glass miming
what little they know
of stone

shadow masons with
blotched out faces
scurrying up the shaking pillars
like ants with hammers
blinded by their goal

to save
the supports oblivious
to the cars soaring
on their shoulders
driving somewhere

and there is a wobble
the waves are rough now
paint like stone fragmenting
to its base
to the face

terrified of wind and water
breathing heavy and alone
as the ants run home
uneasy
about its apathy

for the cars
soon to fall.

a sinister plan

these are all
greater parts of
a sinister plan
biding time nature
will strike
the allure of light
literally stemming from within
as if to capture what is truly
important for its existence
sitting in darkness
without eyes
or a spine
or nothing
just sticky lines
and survival
and a (not really) brain stuck on
just a couple of functions
just a matter of
getting the catch
consuming it in whatever
weird sickly unhuman manner
it decides.

that’s really gross.

yeah dude
limestone LIMESTONE
giving them prosperity

as if they could ever
understand its titanic
endless growth through time
through the power of rain
water dissolving the world
trees stem in deep
rivers going down
seeming to disappear
in dark
where they will ultimately meet
resistance and decide
to just erode.

shake

in my crevice
i gaze wide-eyed
up at the giants screaming
with teardrops in their hands.
my sight has never made
any sense before, these empty eyes
drowned by the drops falling
through their clenched fists.

somewhere out of my hole,
i feel the earth shaking.
rubbing my blanched fingers against
the walls of dark stone, forever-wet.
my white fingernails, shortly-trimmed,
shine in the
pale light.
and i feel that mover,
i feel that shaker.
i will never know his name,
and the men in the clouds and the
men on the ground – too busy
rubbing grease on their bodies
to weather the rain they rattle
from the clouds with their
incessant screams – shall never know either.

still,
he keeps on thundering,
keeps on rumbling.

cold blue is blood red

pump.

i am the swollen beating heart
that never knows why
when each cell
each plasma-filled membrane
each extraneous extremity
has swallowed a sufficient
saturation of oxygen and the cold
blue discs come hurtling back through
the streets with last year’s garbage
that some sick neuron of a
soporific straining pumps pumps
pumps a pulse electrifying
my spine and forcing my
heart
to give life to my
lips
that speak the words that have cut
at the throat of so many
conveniently turned backs to my
tongue
that swallows katrina’s of
foreign saliva and has performed cunnilingus
on onetoomany a rose to my
fingers
each and all that have punched
and typed and shushed and pulled
and fingered and squeezed and twisted
one-too-many times each and
all to my
eyes
that have torn the clothes off the respected
respectable woman and have pinned her to
the floor my remorseless gasps
absorbing her screams gripping her fingers
tighter for one more
one more even though the carpet burn
is hurting her knees
and finally to my
brain
that through new and abandoned convictions
keeps pump pump pumping neurons to
my shriek of a heart for the next round of
reality tv shows starring shrines of beautiful
gossamer ghouls
but no
i’m no philosopher no misanthrope
i’m just sitting on my chair (you know that black
leather rolling chair that my dad bought me
for christmas a few years back) bent over
the chaotic sea of raped
trees on my desk writing a poem on
a thursday night after a long talktomyself shower
draining time before my favorite tv show
10 pm eastern.

now the pump pump pump begins to slow
and as the choking grays of the walls
and ceiling sink me into flannel
pillows into final lonely terror (or dreams)
because i’m just too tired to masturbate
i clutch my hand to my breast
and begin to love my heartbeat.

you bick wit us, lee?

king
you have your desires
but you are not reasonable

your silk-wrapped hot dog buns
and mundane perfumed doilies
are just not worth

these heavy chains
and long long hours
good liege

that it is your choice
is ubiquitously mourned
but it is.

it is
and so we plea (non a
priori) priority look and see

you’ve made one man happy
king
(no, you’re right)

thank you for your time.

gallows in five? make it ten
i should visit my icon
thanks see you then.

collision with a train

they’re not sure yet

it took off both her legs
but they’re still not sure

the fucking news reporters (god
i don’t know why i watched it)
played the nine one one call

all you can hear is her screaming

she mainly worked with
the kids and me at camp
imagine that

so busy saving and
now look at this

wheeling herself in
with the rest of the gang
next summer living poetry

and her goddamn legs are ripped off.

duo coal

moving it to nine
to twelve
it’s not even burning yet

that clink
that suck that delicious
mintlemonvanilla fucking

okayness all that’s stopping me
from breaking down becoming
nothing from doing i don’t even

know what that wiggle
gesturing the hose (clink)
suck it down but

there is no talking
just bubbling just smoldering
ashes becoming

slowly so slowly
less tasty (clink) less full
less beautiful

it’s winding down now
and i have yet to say
a word

she wanted it though
laying there blowing
smoke in my face

maybe it isn’t time
this time
but it’s always time

it’s always (goddamn clink) always time.

fresh air

i just looked at him
kind of fat
kind of mexican
there was gel in his hair
he had combed it back
glasses on his nose
three fat textbooks strangled
by fat fingers dwarfed by
his dumb white shirt

and i was so happy
(i mean who wears
just a white tee shirt)
because this kid
was going somewhere
and hell if even he knows
where he’s going
but he's trudging along

with those three books
i brought no books
to class i brought
coffee and an essay
to catch up on
i should come to
class more often
and not write
poetry (for once)
if he’s going
i’m gone.

my life is greater

my life is greater
if i die in battle
even if i do not
see my victory won.

it is a disease

it is a disease
you fucking idiots

i don’t really know
if there’s a point
in bothering to
try my darndest
in convincing you
anymore

there can’t be
another explanation
it’s just like germs were
when big fucking louie
was first tinkering
around (WHAT DUDE
THERE ARE INVISIBLE
INFECTIOUS MONSTERS
SQUIRMING ON DAMN
NEAR EVERY INCH OF THE
EARTH FUCK THAT SHIT
LET’S GET DRUNK LOLZ)

it’s that brainlessness
this stinking rotting contamifuckingnation
this writhing in pain of
purposelessness and this failure
to see these CHANT CHANT
crossmyheartintheshapeoftwoplanks
ofwoodthatwereusedtohumiliateand
suffocatesociallydeemedscumoftheearth
so-called “solutions” that strip logic from
belief so powerfully that everyone
must (KILL EACH OTHER) must
siphon out what little beneficent
neural activity is still struggling
fucking CHANTS
just
aren’t
working anymore (WHY LOLZ) because

because look at you
when it just doesn’t make sense
and the only thing you can say
is that you see the “truth” in “little things”
or some shit
i’m left gagging
in the closest pair of laundered
socks i can find
instead of explaining (TO ME?)
-yes yes you it’s always me
goddamn yelling
take out the ear-rape electronic
diarrhea polluting your ears-
explaining that

if you’re seeking justification
in anything
for a faith (written by peers, for peers!) that
requires no AND IN FACT CANNOT have
any justification
then the façade is broken
and our arbitrary ethics are still

all that’s holding us here
if all that killing was for nothing

that is
if you are
seeking justification

which
of course
you are
because why wouldn’t you
it’s terrifying out here
put down the book and
huddle closer to the fire
yeah see this is good
oh shit we even got
a fresh jay.

i am euphoria

purest love rising in the ridges
of the softest fiery flesh,
pursed so slightly to suck slowly
the aching wound sounds from
a forever sunlit skin,
and embrace the collateral
damage of our world, fueling the
ashes in our hands of understanding
in a shining wordless kiss.
here, even bliss has no ground.

between my two, god extends
his mighty biceps, to – with naught
but grace – hammer softly the
chisel which cuts away dry
flaking pieces of past and
lust, and the marble smoke
clears to drown me in the
warmth of lips that eat
tranquility and squeeze trust
as if it were a dirty rag, dripping
tears onto ostrich wings
folded side by side in rapture.

time doesn’t fade – it becomes
all the more precious. glowing
grey, green, blue gazing forever into a
light-infested cobalt ocean.
an ocean casting its own spotlight
as she strums from the dark into
the heart of the world.
the soothing truth of simplicity
that begs to sing down mountains
like we have infinity.
countdowns cease, and like
these (likely) eternal hands,
counts more forward.

counts move forward,
widening, stretching, breaking
into a smile that gives god
a chance to rest and admire
his work.

the turn around

alas at last
we come to the culmination
of this most wretched odyssey

ascending here
to a stillness
relinquishing the reins into reflection

nothing but
the fact that we are done
left to breathe our bated breaths

the sag
where judgment does not lift its head
raises neither rifts nor ruin

no surging beams of light
no grand gesture of massive
applause or sinking wall of disapproval

just one brain
fizzling out into sheets far too nice
for dirt in a hole in an ancient fair ground

where did the rest go
never quite hit the mark
just tired of walking now

i’d rather others
have their time to climb all the way
up and then trudge it back down

to the turn around
the breath
the cold unfinished

end alas at last
the end there
was love.

what is an orange

other than
waiting to be eaten.

solo coal

burning star
sizzling tin foil
beneath the pulsing
orange glow

funky rhythms
in my hands sexy
sally and chloe
the last

beacons that could
successfully sustain me
in the briefest contentment
sad but

not anything more
than disappointed
thinking that this might
be where a grounding faith

could hold me here
in this last light
the orange glow
(clink clink) blow.

semen at the brim

(ful)
are those tears i see
you can’t possibly think
i wouldn’t love you
fucking infinitely

rationalization
cannot even contend
in this wretched amalgamation
of jizzing on fate’s face
a welt-ridden (definition of)
griggity-grotesque
leaking out into this
barely normal sense of life that
i’ve found

and i think the thing that is
most remarkable
is the smiling faces

that is
there is
actually something
under this revulsion
of all that which once suddenly
began to make sense
in the least rational of ways
touting

NIETZCHE I finally understand
your rather unhelpful
time-fast-forward
consciousness of what
makes us all seasick
the lack thereof
the predominance of fucking
so(crates)’ implementation of the ceiling

until blooming
blooms boom
blooms boom
blooms up
nothing down
believe (smile)
no please
it’s got to be okay
right

right right
as long as we look up
who could be down

it’s cold
but who could be down
who in this fetterdom.

perhaps a greater character

tell me
something from your
dark and twisted past.

not sure if you’re ready for that.

i have a darkness.

do tell.

let’s just say
traumatic events seem to be
drawn to me and i just have
a tough time ignoring these as
signs of perhaps a greater
character flaw.

and this is the source
of your dark feelings.

scary stupid tormented
ones.

couldn’t be scarier than mine.

do tell.

let’s just say
as much as i hate to think
of being so afraid
so inhabited by terror that
the idea of ending beckons
like beautiful wonderful rest
i (breath.) can’t say there won’t be a day

when it won’t seem so bad.

right. but then
this is all a foolish conversation.

and why is that.

well
who said i was ever supposed
to be happy. (inhale.) or successful.
i’m just a very lucky
wholly arbitrary
zygotic rendezvous
searching for significance
reminding myself to savor
every last delicious breath
coming off your lips.

i think that’s your darkness.
that purposelessness.

powerlessness. purely and
irreconcilably lost.

then i guess I’m a fool
asking if this – my lips and all –
matter to you.

if there’s anything
i can believe in.
(inhale.)
(kiss.)
(sleep.)

telos

what is the soul
of a thing

painfully awake blood
vessels burning round
the retina the ceiling

so cold so utterly manufactured
processed slabs of concrete
welded together
a job for a job
for a job

and me the telos
busy in this staring contest
wasting my education away

pondering if it is wrong
for an animal to die
as if the flourishing oyster
isn’t drowning in joy

but here it is the rising
that fat sandy oyster weighing
down the scale lifting me up
beyond the ceiling through justice
and obligation each soul a
raging candle lighting the path

into the
battered and tattered mausoleum
i push aside the dusty skeletons
of atman and jesus
and snuggle up in between.

future equals bleak

that fucker
you just want to punch
in the nose like
whatshecontributing
to anything around here
just a smug self-interested
journeyman of motion
and (think!) that
fucker’s gonna have a
spouse someday goddamn
future equals bleak
i mean really
let’s not get all newagey
with our inculturalcated
medicated sense of mind
(goddamn pavlov pets)
thinking every soul has
a RIGHT TO LIVE life
to its fullest (or some
shit) i mean gimmeabreak
like those of us
in the ENLIGHTENED
world walk with any
HIGHER AIMS than to
do what mommy
and celebrityville says to do
(so let’s do it if it’s all we have)
but is it that is my question
is it is it really (so
i don’t have what you would
call a quoteunquote better idea)
if so then a philosophical sigh
followed by a magnanimous
watershed embrace of
arbitrary values
and you know what
i’ll STILL punch that dogshit
nodstoomuch beersucking
vomitgurgling revulsion
of a genuine human
every damn day of the week
allsicansayisbuhLEAK.

and smattered applause
and a sip of bottled water
and a thin wallet
and (fingers crossed)
a scintilla of pride.

the perch

but the surging sea
will at last rush out
the endmost of its
heart of fire
and the
heaving
tide of calm
and concord will
alight on the perch
and peace(burst
ingattheseams)fully
we will reign free
in nothing more
than brotherhood.

how i can lay here

how i can lay here
and love you

such that in this forsaken
drowse i close my eyes
but cannot sleep

and the burning in my
heart thrums each breath
from my nose
bringing the silence

disarrayed in the dark
imploring for the solace
of dreams

to (at last)
kiss you

and finally tell you
how lovely you are.

skip to the races

in a never-ceasing ever-blissing
always-kissing explosive-rundown-
popeyed-delicious twirl of being
perfectly and delectably
high

i journey onward sword in hand
and laugh and giggle because
the rain keeps hitting harder
and harder and the tears
dribblespilldeluge in thicker
pools of lost and wasted soul
lost and wasted
lost and straining
man outstretched taking the fall
for everyone here

and the rain shatters down around
his body and he crumbles into
nothing but his fiery veins
begging for his baby girl back
to a once warm home
with a poison throne
where ghosts cling hardfast
to the rising beast that
refuses to forget the now lifeless
fiber that used to be cells splitting
into other cells
but now everything
dark and hateful is
flashing in the rain
intermittently
because
my eyes want to see
no more torture
no more nothing
no more of
in out down
sound round
like to rhyme
never quite keeping
the metronome time
up
on the piano

and so i breathe in deeply
everything that ever had a
purpose or a scoff from the
heart of my scalding
bubbling underbelly
at these critics and skeptics
who do nothing but whine
and know absolutely nothing
and do not as of yet realize
how precious
this gift could be

and the smoke rises on this morning
after the brutal battle of the ever-scorched
tundra and the rumble rumble
chants under your feet
rumble rumble it blossoms up beneath you
like the upsurge of humanity finally
in its first bewildered coming and like
christmas we all gather around
the cross and take things
from under it
like bicycles
and tonka trucks
and blood-stained spears
and endless unconditional love
and the coldest limpest hand
of destiny on this coldest
deadest ground

and from a cottage down
the street they watch the
smoke rise and flutter away
but i inhale once more
that which leaves me
somehow brighter and
somehow further down
in my darkness
without a lamp
or a flicker
of a fire
here in this
hole and i
skip to the
races.

the burst

onwards
and upwards it goes
swelling to the edge of
the burst (i just hope it
can stand the heat) i
can already feel the fire
stirring within it
singing odes to my
broked-down nerves.

if i can’t open a heart (bleeding
or not here i come) i’d love to
open an eye at least just one
i’d like that balloon to pop
come to think of it and
(sputter sputter) spout
into raging fire a torrential
eruption for the sake of chancing
an atom or two’s courtship
clasping each other tight enough
to hold onto a simmering
fraction of heat and

maybe just maybe
one little ember will breathe
and the ash will fall onto the
life loving dirt cold and bland

and maybe just maybe
a speck of smoldering orange will glow
in the bottomless gray endless streets
moonlight delightfully absent in the
quaint reflections on street corners
and as the ember sinks
burning into dust
her lids might open
and a flicker of red
would alight
reminding her that it’s okay to dream
but it’s better to sleep.

here at the end of all things

you count the grains of sand on the beach
you say hey
come over here and count these grains
look real hard
and tell me if there are 728521 grains
or
728522 grains in this jar of sand
and i will look real hard and
study with my big fat brain
and finally
i will come to the conclusion
but you keep counting with
no conclusion in sight and
simply say
look
now that i
have done all this counting
(see what good counting
i have done) and
look
i have counted even more than
this simple jar of sand
but have counted the whole beach
from whence it came
and now i (truly!) know
that there are exactly
bighugelargenumber grains
of sand here
and i will say
wow
that is so interesting you now know
that the beach upon which we tread has exactly
bighugelargenumber grains of sand
on it
or
in it
or
whatever
and you thrust your hands upon your
hips and embolden your chest with this
mighty newfound knowledge welling up
in your big fat brain and say
look at everything we’ve accomplished
here at the end of all things
and i will say
wow
that is so interesting because
we now know this bighugelargenumber
but what does that mean
(what i mean to say is)
how does this help us
it is just another number
like two or five
and you say
well this means that
we know something
and i say
what do we know
we can no better explain ourselves
and have found no better scapegoat for our
actions and behavior and personality
(and the psychological quagmire
that we all bought stock in)
it just makes me sick with anger
that we can be butchered into little tests
and questions
and ass-tro-logical signs that say
hey this is how you are and
how you think
but you’re not really thinking
and
as i’m begging for
some
slight iota of
significance
from these
scientists
and
men of reason
all i hear is the sound of their
croaking honda civic engines
igniting gasoline
creating a spark
pumping pistons
all the way to the next beach
at the end of all things
where they’re getting out their
brand new shiny abacuses
and state-of-the-art magnifying glasses
as they begin their game again.

falling off the wall

it’s falling off the wall
or it’s ragged effortful wheezing
or it’s breaking into pieces
too small for fingers to pluck
or it’s good children laughing
at a bad god
or it’s the disappointing end
of the road it seems

but
in time
the paths are made straight
the wrongs held accountable
as we rally around
yetanothermother miscarrying
yetanotherchild
oblivious and indignant
of what splendorous luck
she has stumbled upon on this
most facetious of stages

crying out
a sick and succinct soliloquy
to love the earth if for nothing
other than the fact that
she cannot stay.

what makes us human, i suppose

something more than mere obligation
a prose sweeter than sick bed nursing
back to health don’t you die on me
i need your strength or who knows
something more than reminiscing
a night of laughter and the strange
air somehow void of the sincerity
we once seemingly bought into no
waitress don’t take that away too

yes let’s just keep it here
i can barely keep it from
sifting through my
fingers but keeping something
even something lost
is better than keeping nothing

if so wickedly forced to choose
which, sadly, we are.

skyscrapers

the colossal lack of motivation
is what we’re here to discuss with

you. you have skyscrapers inside
you. inside your head. there is no

limit to the things you can accomplish.
and as bright as you are i don’t see

how you can refrain from creating
anything and everything spectacular.

the saddest part is you know it.
you tip a hat to the barely tapped

sagacity exuding from your limbs de-
rationalizing this twisted heartless world

into dumb luck. drooling that it’s arbitrary.

and that it’s all very sad. sad, and there’s
trumpets. alas, you scoff from your perch

that the rest of the world just needs
to slurp down another dairy queen

beverage. because who knows
how much longer any of us is here.

oh but i had so briefly held the light

say i
to god
at the assuaging demise
or at least to what i picture
god to be
in this
most likely of scenarios.

buzz

what’s with all the wreckage
THIS IS THE RECKONING
do you reckon
YES I RECKON SO
but what does wrecking have
to do with the reckoning
TASTE THIS
IT IS ANYTHING WITH FAT
AND SUGAR AND GREASE
but why do i want that
answer my question
IT TASTES GOOD
well sure but
IT DISTRACTS YOU FROM
THE TRUTH
JUICY HAMBURGERS MAKE YOU
FEEL SPECIAL AND WARM INSIDE
my sense of personal life sanctity
is reinforced by my appreciative and
functional appetite
YES IF THE BEES WANT TO LIVE
THEN THE HIVE KEEPS BUZZING
ah i see movers to move and ars gratia
blah blah artis bullshit you still didn’t
answer my question
WHAT QUESTION
the wrecking
WRECKING MOVING
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE
moving is something with gainful intent
i would think
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
IS AN UNFAMILIAR CONCEPT
TO YOU THEN
it’s not unfamiliar but
i just can’t accept it
WELL THEN
LET’S SEE YOUR GENES PASSED ON
i’ll pass them right across your eyes
you give me a couple minutes.

slug life

“take your epiphanies seriously,”
says the slug to the wall.

this is the reckoning

so
the time of reckoning
is at hand

WHAT CONTRIBUTIONS
TO HUMANITY
DID YOU (fucking
junkie) OFFER
US?

well okay so
maybe i didn’t
paint a dali
or do some
scientific science
business with the
makesyourbreakfastforyou
genius calculators

but
WHAT?
but i finally found
a way to go to sleep
and i guess you could
say it was painful
but that’s only when
you think of pain
in terms of the
failure to fulfill
an enchanting potpourri
of arbitrary values
clogging the minds
of so many potentially
genuine individuals

WHAT?
YOU ARE MAKING
ME ANGRY well
i guess i should stop
OF COURSE YOU SHOULD
THIS IS THE RECKONING
zipped lips (chief)
hit it and quit it
go for the gold
rock on baby

QUIET DOWN
ANY LAST WORDS?
ahem ahem
good to be here
ladies and gentlemen
i mean this (with all the
sincerity i can scrounge up)
nummmmbero uno: i never
imbibed “too much” cannabis
never ever ever
even when your ears start ringing
and they definitely shouldn’t be
(you remember that day)

nummmmbero dos equis:
i never had a lot of luck
with chicks who were
taller than me (and
fuck that shit)

but then (in these strange, dark times)
we must remember that
this is nothing.

taking umbrage

it is appropriate
to be asked of thunder
its purpose

aside from the
obvious ominous
clatter of fearful

feet running
from rain ‘round
the corner

sinking through
titan spires of
lightning

at the whim of
the atmosphere,
oblivious.

the rising itself

aren’t i supposed to be
“the future”
(something other than
just growing up into you)
or so i heard
but just like the easter bunny
that’s slipping away too
just another
illusion
haha you got me
not to sound cliché
but i don’t see this place
being saved despite
such species self-interest
seems all right to me
anyway
oh hey man
i appreciate it but
you packed it
you get greens.

pretty little girl

i lost.

i have visits. and phone calls.
you know what she says to me?

when are you coming home, daddy?
and that, i don’t know what you say to that.

every day.
sometimes it’s short. sometimes it’s long.
you know, she’s four.
she’s cute, too.

i'm nineteen.

jennifer.

yeah, she’s healthy.
she’s just a pretty little girl.

she would have a baby sister, too.
but she went and did it.
she really went and did it.

i don’t know how i didn’t do it.
just kill her.

you will feel like strangling her.

i'm going to have quick smoke.

i just need to save a little more.
then i’m going to convince her
to give me my girl and hopefully
i’ll take her to the states.
we’ll settle down.

twenty-six.

she’s due again in five months.
wants a DNA test for this one.

i’m going to go before i get too emotional.
you have a good night.

i will.

pissing and spitting

but this is not
a place for creative insight
get out of here
bar the gates
and burn the books
(while you're at it)
maybe we'll get something done
or maybe not but as long
as the machine keeps spinning
that rumbling hum will
drown us into sleep
and i am sorry howard roark
we will deny (even you!) your
martyrdom
by spitting
on the grave
on the page
where the last of knights
quivers and dies
under candlelight.

the insistence on the word

is what i think will do us in
or so i think no reason why
it just seems a bit too para
lyzing (not that such a book
is malicious or fallacious
fallacious in content but)
i think it’s locking up
the minds of we-free-
people clamoring with
our phds saying look
(at me) now see (what i’ve
done) now give me my
gold star (it’s mine, right)
because the word teaches
us little children that if
you try real real hard then
the light will conquer
this chaotic sphere (of
which we’re terrified)
but they take only bits
and pieces and they
insist on two or three
hand-picked orders
they feel like following
instead of the whole
shebang
so let me get this straight
i should cast my
rationality giddily aside
instead of thinking (for
once) and be at peace
but i’m exhausted from
hating and if this chaotic
sphere gives us one thing
it’s some common goddamnground
and these razor sharp
rocks are all my feet
have left to (goddamn) stand on
but then i guess
that’s your point (la
vérité brille) and
your excuse is as
inconsequential as mine.

ad nauseam

if i had known her better
i might not have immediately thought
SUICIDAL
when i beheld the old lady’s
decrepit shuffle to her sedan
in the grocery store parking lot
this bright thursday morning.
she shuffled on
as if void of purpose
and such purposelessness were
out of her control.
either age
or lack of use
had siphoned out the once-raging
blood from her weathered hands
from her fingertips now resignedly,
valiantly clasped
around her push cart,
and she reeked of it.
the stench of her uselessness.
the wood of her casket.

and i felt bad jumping to
SUICIDAL
i mean okayokayokay
who knows
she might have plenty
going on in her life
but
we both knew
that was society scolding me for thinking
just what everyone else was thinking:
SUICIDAL
we like to stamp it on everybody
with a sad song or a gloomy gaze
because we are important
we have
PURPOSE
we have a certificate signed dr. whohastimetocare
stuck up on the refrigerator
eight by eleven inch validation
a golden anachronism held high
above our heads
for our dried-out parents
now weary of investing in the future
of the future of the future of the future,

and as i watched
that faded, cloudy crown
crumbling through that woman’s fingers
in the grocery store parking lot
i realized why she hung on to her
cart so tightly
why she bothered to buy a specific
brand of peanut butter
and to remember her niece’s birthday
because who needs something so small
so geologically insignificant
so colossally and undeniably trifling
so evolutionarily inconsequential
just an old woman
breathing deeply
filling her nostrils with the smell
of atrophy to which they have long
grown accustomed.

so SUICIDAL or not
i watched her take the cart
back to the place where everybody
puts the cart
awry
and i watched her long hobble
back to the car and i watched her
get in the car and adjust her mirrors
and light a cigarette
and slowly
goddamnit
just so slowly
drive off to enjoy the rest
of her quite useless thursday morning.

and as she drove out of my sight
i swiveled back around
and felt the air conditioning pound
my face and i took off my seatbelt
and laid my forehead on the steering wheel,
and minutes later
i stepped out of my car,
shut the door,
and walked toward the grocery store
almost completely certain
that i had found some new,
heartening hope.

as if it were necessary to understand

if you knew what it meant to me
then you’d understand why i still
get the butterflies

but it’s tainted now
it’s gone away
or it’s convoluted or
it just means that much more to me
and i don’t know what it means to me
but i know that it means

absolutely everything
and all i can hope now is that
i could give it to you
and grant you this love
that i have in this perfect
sunlit dinner for two

in this quagmire of a starless room
where i sit waiting alone
for one more ray
one more moment that
i have yet to adequately
understand how to cherish.

drowning

when you are forgotten
drowning
when you are blind to everything
except your uselessness
when the absence of your self-worth
becomes all too unbearable
when paper cranes ignite no hope
and shame cripples you for
bothering with self-pity
when each ounce of oxygen
you suck down only adds to
this titanic and cringeworthy
embarrassment

and even though it seems unwise
your mind can’t stop circling
toying
with the idea of ending

remember: at this very moment
your pathetic squalid
and intensely arbitrary
existence
is the sole and entire reason
that your ancestors lived
at all.

everybody's free

i am open so sweetly open
open and my wings are ready
fluffed and feathered and raised to
soar beyond what i could never understand
and the butterflies are telling me that they’re
happy even though i never brushed up on butterfly
when i was in grade school
i didn’t know doors could have wings or fly regardless
but here comes a wind and i’m catching it by god. catch.
look there’s aladdin i think i’ll give him the bird when i go by
careful though i’m sure with such wild aplomb that motherfucker’s
got to have razor spikes on his carpet surely maybe i’ll tell him to go
put a fucking shirt on for once (chrissake) and then speed away quickly
looking to roll a thickass joint with a couple of friends i love that i’ve got
some time now some time then to just have it and look for some steak and
fries and some jesus in the sand damn i really am happy no shoes just to think
(oh yes) that yesterday i would have been worried about windburn on my toes and
the rocks when i land but not this day i’m feeling a trembling down there way way way
down so maybe i’ll just stay for a while kind of ruins the point of having the damn carpet
in the first place though maybe i’ll land i guess i’ll have to but when will will will becomes
am am am i will/be/am ready (yessir) waiting just because i can see and feel our wind our sky
but i will come off eventually shit there he is i’m gonna grease that punk yellow face chinaman

zero chance

i hate the past.
some people might look at it as
a learning experience or say
hey, you’ve had good times, or say
remember when you laughed so
hard that your ribcage hurt? or say
everything happens for a reason,
but i say fuck you, sure as i love
tight pussy, i hate the past.

so I beseech you
stretch into the light of the future until
your hips ache from stretching (stretch like you
stretch when you’re reflecting on how low you just
sank her ass into that bed and then realize you
aren’t keeping the flow circulated to your thighs
and lactic acid is a bigger cocksucker than conan).

and i think and think and think and think
about some fat greased-up balding twenty-something
(who gives a shit?) wife-beater-bearing smug, guilty
jock itch masturbating to his warehouse of internet porn,
face bleached pale and a sickly green from just one too
many months without any externally-performed fellatio,

and i laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh
because what that fucker forgot is that
cunnilingus is what counts
and that the smell of tired and rampant
pussy-soaked saliva sets you about as
psychologically fine as your first stroll
of admission through a white bourgeois
community garden.

sex is the best medicine,
and I feel physically sick
when I see these infants
parading around in their
shopping carts, eating and
eating and jamming their
fingers down their throats
to clear the canals to eat and
eat and eat again and eat until
the world erupts in nausea
and its chalk-thick
blood vessels burst
in a single saturated
ocean-sized
tear drop.

i wish i could convince the world that
love is always the best answer, every
time, and to never forget that
belief in loneliness
could help you find a higher purpose
if you have enough faith in faith to want to.

perhaps i’m looking at things the wrong
way. perhaps i think too much or i need
to be loved or i know where i’m going
or i hate to beg for sex (i mean, look at me),
but if there’s one thing good about the past,
is that it’s over.

apple core

“i have of late
but wherefore i know not”
ceased to resemble
a coherent human being
just a jar of good or evil
each thought scared
and scattering away at
earth’s fraying edge
burst and laid waste
in spite of its own gravity

trembling and rotted
the apple core
tightening its fibrous grip
(reckon i must)
reason with the
glorious animal (this most
breathtaking ape) hello
quintessential spawn there are
many questions you must
have for me

and i know they can be
(how can i say) frustrating
but be of good cheer
you can always
OVERCOME me
or
ESCAPE me
or
DENY (this
brave o’erhanging firmament)

so while you
RAPE me
and keep looking upward
as if “god” doesn’t see
your cock in me
i ask only
that you might
(LOVE) me
or
(HOLD) me

or
learn from me
drink from me
feed and grow from me
rise with me burn with me
sleep with me
and finally die
laughing
content

as muddy as
the rest of us.

gravestone

he who intended to get it together
and at the last aching minute bring
everything painful and inspiring
into coalescence our champion
the hero for himself stunningly
heliocentrically absorbed
who understood
the virtue of being selfish
which is on the tips of our
tongues all sweating in
anticipation of just maybe
one day not being
inescapably disappointed with
ourselves so we slink back
to our cold and cancerous cave
ostensible villains of humanity
bearers of the most dark and
unnecessary plague disgorging
this and that and the other
just because and for no
other reason
with nothing but
good intentions.

this

they’re all those people
they’re sure – you’re sure – that
they had the right idea

and yet you can’t quite shake the
feeling that somehow they missed out
missed out on all this

but what did they miss?

if this is putting some wear on a guitar neck
or being never-truly-worried about the girl
you’re positively crazy about

then maybe i have some ground
some black coffee grounds that i can
recycle into my rose garden

if i want them to return next spring
i’m willing to bet they’d return anyway
though just to spite me

claiming i’ve got to do a little jig and
write some more vague poetry if i want
to see them again

but what would i miss?

heartache

in an ongoing existential crisis
aching just to laugh
to once more
find things funny
and electrify my brain
with the buzzing chatter
of the bobble head dolls
rolling around in sweating noise
and flesh
vomiting on each other’s faces
and hands

in a perpetual state of self-disappointment
aching just to smile
to once more
speak my mind and
then be understood
by the illiterate
mud-soaked hornets
flinging bibles at the writhing hive
and cross
vomiting in college bathrooms
and sinks

in an endless self-sung elegy
aching just to stop the world
to once more
ask them what they are doing
why they are running
why my heart never
races as quickly as theirs
throbbing alone in rhythm
and discord
vomiting in my restless sleep
and empty arms

but maybe this is all right,
maybe this lightly-broiled cacophony and
nauseating toxic potage
is what it’s all about.
and it’s all going to be just fine,
aching and aching and okay.