morning light

Wrapped
In the safe cocoon
Of flannel blankets
Soft pillow
Beneath my head
Morning light
Peaking in from behind
The darkened curtains

You've been here
With me
To wash the pain away
But today
I am alone

This landscape
My own
Warm and
Quiet with dazy
Sleepiness, my
Eyes blink open

To the reality
Of the You
The rubber wall
The floor full
Of holes

Gone are the dreamy
Dreams that
Moonbeams bring
These moments
My few moments
I can call my own
Pain free
Without you

cubed

It doesn't
really matter
does it?
Nobody really
cares right?
Hidden away in
their boxes filled
with secrets. I'm
hidden away in
my box too. My own
secrets at the cost
of stretching
and reaching. My
loveless
soulless
box that I will
return to. To
never
love
again.
Once I fell
in love with a
tree. It lived high
on a grassy hill. I
watched every
day as horses
ate the grass from
beneath it. The tree
shaded the horses
from the hot
summer sun. The sun
orbited behind it
like it was the
center of the
universe. Every
day for years I
watched as the
tree reached and
stretched. It
blossomed and
flourished. Circled
by the sun and
moon.
Then it was gone.
Just a stump in
the ground. Broken
limbs littered
in the dirt. Fallen
leaves and
sticks. The horses
found shady
hay under other
trees. And the
sun found another
center. My heart
felt it would burst
from my chest. With
quivering chin
and tear soaked
cheeks I couldn't
stop from making
the creek a
flooded river. Overflowing
its banks. And I
swore I would
never
love
again.
Broken promises and
lies within my
own head. I am a
round wheel in a
black square box. I'm
worth it but
not worth it. I
wait and I can't
wait. I'm on fire and
the fire is
extinguished
in one swift
omission. I don't
know what I am
because its always
different.

I'm wasted,

in a puddle,

in the moonlight,

on a tombstone,

wrapped in string
and clouds,

in my secret box
where no one can
see me but
the river I make
and will
hopefully
drown
in.

i am

I am a ghost
passing through people
and things
without ever
an affect

I am a wisp of smoke
wrapped around your hands
your head
without you ever knowing
I was there

I am steam
collecting and condensing
on your skin
only to be
wiped away

I am made of rice
fallen from the moon
rabbits stood on tip toes
to make me
unnoticed

I am an allegory for war
reason and
blind emotion
fight the individual
invisible battle

I am a seer of light
made of coal
I absorb and emit nothing
an observer
I am alone

real as five senses

Tell me how real this is because
I want answers where
There are none I want
To poke a stick at it and
Have it resist
I want to know reality

Is it real
Like when you're
Trying to sleep in a warm quiet room
And all you can hear is that
Mosquito buzzing by
Your ear looking
For the sweet spot she
Lands on your shoulder and you
Want to smack her but
When you move she's back
In your ear and you'll only hit yourself

Is it real
Like when you're pulling
Weeds in the garden to
Clear a spot to plant
Tomato seeds to grow something
Beautiful and delicious and you
Dig and dig until the dirt is
In every poor and wrinkle and
Under your nails and
When you go inside to
Wash your hands the dirt doesn't
Come off unless you get
The scrubby brush and scrub and
Scrub and scrub it off

Is it real
Like when your friend offers
You a mystery food snack and
The very taste of it may throw you
Into convulsions as you spit it out from
Your mouth and your nose you
Might as well have nibbled on
Some gasoline and a match as
The taste will never
Ever leave you

Is it real
Like every Monday of your
Four years of high school you'd
Daydream in science class and
Smell the scent of the freshly
Mowed lawns wet and
Green fields of carnage that
Every time you smell cut grass it
Takes you right back to the
Treachery and chaos and
Fiction of
Those unbalanced teen years

Is it real
Like watching the death of
A loved one
Going from bright and
Vibrant to wasting away into
Nothingness muscles going hair
On the floor cups of urine and
Tubes of blood losing life as
Life leaves in
The slowest and most
Painful of journeys

Is it real
Like those unforgettable moments in life that
Happen once and
Happen forever
Real like the sky and
The earth
Its own history revolving and
Evolving around itself to the
End of time

I think it is

unfinished business

Washed in you

A reflection of being that I can see in the moon
Hollow and made of cheese
I am circumvented

Unfinished business
And I wonder why I exist

I hear you
I see you
I am you

But unfinished business
Leaves me
Feeling
Hollow as the moon

Light years from

Being heard
Being seen
Being

photograph in the wooden stairwell

There is dark, wet hair hanging straight down
A forgotten crown of time hovering above an opaque face

This is a distraction from the large ancient concrete wings
And rolling eyes searching the crumbled ground
Echoes of slow moving footsteps towards the

dark and endless

Only prayers to a non-existent God
shatter the silence when in the presence of winged creatures

The desperate cry's for the sparing of an incoherent life
Falling on otherworldly ears

There is silence when it's all over

Deaf trees with limbs as wide as crusted mossy arms
Fallen yellow leaves on worn misty paths
Crushing heavy soles in their familiar timeless march
Tiny civilizations bustling in the dusty glow radiating from a blurred horizon watching with one eye

There is the captured sun,
resting, in the palms of soft fervid hands
Scrupulous meditation
Sipping from crossed hesitant legs

The centered, crushing focus of a seducer's self serving thrust

There is my death

The divorce of spine from the
Balance of previous existence

There are tightening joints

Pulling tighter

And tighter

The last breath seeping from vain malevolent lips
No ease of journey comes

The opposite of life pushing through every day
The undying residual echo of humanity that

Has not

Will not fade

There is the bittersweet and salty drink offered without choice
Circumstantial muscles at the base of her wings that flex as she stretches her arm
Offering her tarnished silver cup

The withered reflection swallowed whole by unchaste spots of brown

There is an utterance of peace

Warmth

As liquid flows down clenched throat

There is the scorching truth injected under crisp blue skin
Smoke and screams tower like a steaming cityscape in red dusk
Razed muscles and a formerly beating heart wrap around weakened arms

This is the open hole I fell through that was once solid reality

This is everything she taught me with never-ending example

air

One breath

Is all
It takes

A small
Extraction
Of air

Flowers
Have petals

Birds
Wings

I have

The
Air

You
Give
Me

Fuseli's The Nightmare

Tiny steps to nowhere. Walking in circles faster than the earth's rotation. The spinning and spinning of wheels that don't turn anything. Cogs for the sake of cogs. This sad little sense of competition. Opposition. Without ever any aquisition. Never. This is my own demolition. Destruction of truth. I want to be honest. Need to be honest. Honest to myself. But I only find a hole in the place where my brain flickered with fire and ice. Tiny black eyes burn in that green man sitting on my chest. He's strong as an anvil but can choke me with the stealth of piano wire in the dark. He holds my neck extracting air and love and peace from my very lungs. His own wheels are mighty warped oak with a squeak that speaks to the centuries he's been here. Nothing I can do. There's nothing I can do but swallow his stares. And let his spiney fingers penetrate my chest and pull the sanity from me. Pulling himself onto my cogs stopping them with the flicker of his dark eyes. I'm in silence, gasping for air deep under clear blue water. The earth continues to rotate where loves love and lovers love more. I keep up with my tiny steps. The green man in tow, keeping up with the earth. I want to touch that. Wanting to touch that love of lovers. That love. Wanting his touch as a lover.

sonnet IV

This is where I return to the sky
Floating above bodies scattered about
The last thing here won't be ready to die
Maybe we'll get angry, mourn to a shout

Standing by the river, the waters rise
Sacred burials consumed everyday
Fires burn in our hearts, minds, and seeing eyes
Abundant life is now far and away

Close your eyes, the earth will have her vengeance
Close your eyes, your heart will turn to hot glass
Lava spat to crumbling land imminence
Dominant oceans swallow in one pass

Malignant plume of smokey corporate greed
Smoking life out of life that's almost free

love

There is no love. No more love. I've severed the morphine drip. Dripping that clear solution that imitates love. Hallucinates love. Spinning in the tube in a downward spiral for the world to see. For weeks.Tie dye color wheel spins until the nausea puts me to the floor. And I can't take it anymore. That hybrid beast of mystical fancy and hardcore triple ex crush topples me, stomps me, gores me. Black eyes and spinning heads. My morphine was never real. This love was never real. You warned me. And I knew it. But I wanted that sticky morphine. That subcutanious placibo inserted with the keys of a keyboard. That clear tube under my skin, releasing a false sense of serenity. Sense of ecstacy. Ecstacy of interest. That interest in me. That never was. Oozing in my veins, thick in my blood, changing me. I'd change back, out of spite but I lost who that was. That person, full of angst and contempt. I hate that you found the love in me. Nurtured found-love patched together like some assemblaged art piece in a stark and cold museum. I suture my heart. The heart that never was. Piece it back together and pretend it was never open. Never ever open. I was broken. Am broken. Will be broken and embarassed. I meant it all but didn't mean to write it. Damning evidence that will add to my list of curses. Now, I'll put my wings away and drift back into my soulless coma. Where there is no love. Will be no love. Because love is not real. My love was never real.

in want

I want your mind
Wrapped around me like
Flannel sheets in winter's night
Whispering to me
In knots

I want your body
Naked and warm against me
Becoming one with me
Welded together
In twists

I want your heart
I want its thumps and pumps
To match mine
To sing my song
In swirls

I want your lips
Close to mine
Speaking your name
Softly
Into my soul
Speaking through me
In me

I want my kismet
To kick in
To listen to me
Like prayer flags
In wind

stumbling

I stumbled on your words last night
Every night
I took my eyes off the cracked foundation
Off my footing

Looking to the horizon
But only for a minute
I forgot what's there

Now I remember

This thing inside me
This love of its own
This thing
I won't call love
I can't call love

But is

I don't know how to say it
(always grasping at words and trying to put them together)
I want to shout it
Scream to the Heavens

But I know you know
How could you not

This Is something
I know it's something
It shifts in my heart
In that little dark spot
Where there was nothing before

Growing
like a web
Catching more of itself
As it filters through my veins
Filters my blood
You give me life

•

What if they prove
there are no mermaids
There's only fish and mammals
In the sea
Swimming unmolested by
Myth and hope

What if the world is round
And we just keep spinning with
No hope of connection

When I finally found hope

•

I will however
Endure
Through several lifetimes
A million lives
To say those words
That all the metaphor spells out

That you already know

To say them
Quietly with warm breath
And eyes wide open

Close to your skin

should

I can't see my room through my fingers

wet skin holds it all together

I can't see the pictures of

'I wishes' and
'I should haves'

everything I am is

something I could be

or should have been

untold injury

I spend the last minutes of consciousness contemplating my own death. Is the oven off? What if the heater starts a fire? What if there's spontaneous combustion? As I sleep, I dream of a watery playground. Frolicking with sealife in motionless blue waves. I don't need air. I start my day needing a boost. Sugar, caffeine, heroin, crack, not really but something. I need a boost. The phone rings. I wait five rings before the woman's monotone voice pleasantly asks for the caller to leave a message. Then there's nothing. I think they know about me. Paranoid delusions suffocate me. Depriving me of oxygen like a fire stealing my life force. The back of my shoulders shudder as the last bits of medicine leave my system. Like floating butterflies startled by a prowling housecat. The blackness last left me in high school with that last hit of acid. Lying on the lemon yellow couch, waiting for a voice to pull me out, stretching its hand into the swirling and spinning of beautiful dirt tossed on my head. Sticky sweat held my hair close. It was only 10pm but it seemed like a million. Even earlier, the touch to my clammy flesh was a new sensation. Even alone, I was surrounded. Then they leave, one by one.

foolish things

The foolish things I say twist like ribbons in my head.
Bright green polyester spinning over and over until it drills out my skull.
But never really leaving.

Centuries ago,
I was caught in a lightning storm with a beautiful rapist. He squeezed me to death and cracked my soul.
I wanted him to.
...before I knew.

Rain poured on us.
Penetrating my skin.
His indelible mark and my future indifference in scars no one can see.
Still.

The foolish things I say take me there.
Double double triple guessing myself.
Quiet for too long and held by cells... now released.
A torrent of words from seemingly nowhere.

Regret and fury dance in fire. Melting away all life.
My oceans stronger now, drowning that wretched sickening fire.
The space made free is open.
...open.

Love and respect are free to enter and steam out the wrinkles.
Enter me with a welcoming heart and arms.
Still foolish in love with the best play on words.
Still the foolish things I say come out.
Maybe there is no greater agony.

Sonnet III

This is where I return to the mine
Buried beneath mud and decaying life
Thousands of years and suspended in time
Overexposed roots drip of telling strife
Boring a hole deep into the unknown
Wasted scrap unknowingly torn away
Secret moments crumble from dust to stone
All that's left is darkness, how can I stay
But with time and space I will be alright
Everyone forgets and everyone lies
Not invisible and not out of sight
If nothing else happens, everything dies
Deserving revelations do cause pain
Arcane veiled truths will forever remain

Sonnet II

This is where I return to the sea
Smooth promontories shield blackened currents
Gazing down, my own reflection empty
Moving to the darkness makes much more sense

Today, I see you the way God sees you
Close to the sky, there's silence among trees
Hollowed noise inside my head, fresh as dew
Lost in ideas, I can hardly breathe

But there's mention of the swelling high tide
Drifting awake with blank stares from fishes
Softly floating back to sleep by your side
Abundance is granted to my wishes

Relentless madness, feudal obligation
Swept free by cold wind and indecision