percentages,

I have questions

of that ilk:

How yellow is the light,

or is it red?

Are we being ƒollowed?

In that period

of stillness and clanks

of a passing train,

the broken voice

volunteering nothing,

I asked again in

sonorous lows.

This happened before,

only then it was after,

instead of before,

which makes

education taste like

water: plain, but essential.

All she said was I’m ill.

I thought I’d kill her

for hiding, or die

crouched in the

foyer of

the building,

laying in weight

I accrued from knowing-

not knowing-

smoke rising

from my hand.

This is not a casino,

it is a bedroom,

and as such

should sometimes

be kept in the dark,

but it was sandy

lamplight,

and you were right

to speak.

Yet 1 in 50,

for all its swollen lips,

does not answer:

my ardor or the risk?

I’ve come back from

the bathroom

to thank you

by smelling like soap.

It will never change.

Knowing something

was wrong, I asked.

I can never thank

you enough.

It was a night at sea what with our eyes like lighthouses beaming at each others.

Almost the words slipped from my lips and yet sub-rosa they remain years later.

One good eye, Cyclopes, kept vigil over the smells of brewed coffee: your cup.

Were switchblades named for their sound – the switch! with which they come?

Every face looks more ominous when lit by just a flashlight’s palling haze.

When your hands are slopped with grease how door-handles require turning!

What with so many exercise machines and marital tensions implosion looms.

I do have a drinking problem. My problem is I like the taste of more than one.

One beer, one whiskey, one wine just aren’t enough: consider two and three!

However, the stupor days are gone: a clean good drunk yields truer word-work.

If only the childhood matched the problems. If only Suburbia was rougher.

What a weak phrase. What a shallow view. What a self-loathing midnight writer.

This stanza is over with. This stanza is finished. This stanza never left ground.

Guess i sorta loved so many people i cannot name the first nor the last nor any.

Guess a number and i’ll tell you that number is not the number behind my back.

Guess pain comes when pleasure leaves but the two are twins like hills & valleys.

Guess you can’t win over anyone if you haven’t first lied to yourself that it’s okay.

Guess money’s more important than our discursive culture likes to admit it is.

Guess people never change although their circumstances sway like rope bridges.

Guess luck is more a matter of seizing life than falling into place. It’s not all bad.

Guess truth comes easier when dew stinks up the heavens, turns pavement to gold.

Guess God’s a nutty alchemist who brews up the heavens, turns pavement to gold.

Guess God’s a lesser being, ignorant to his powers, zapping life but never knowing.

Guess God’s not really God unless he knows he’s God. Guess God’s not unaware.

Guess love can never be proven but people die for it just the same, just the same.

The lines don’t matter much it’s the writing them that improves the overall skill.

The truth cannot be touched, cannot be seen, cannot be heard or smelled or tasted.

The secrets we keep simultaneously, if only we disclosed them, would cause what?

The idiot lays in bed all day or goes to work it makes no difference the idiot thinks.

The genius lays all day or works it makes no difference the genius thinks too much.

The happiness that is eternal cannot be named, cannot be sensed until it’s too late.

The impending doom of our culture is this: unchecked consumption lacking care.

The wells of oil & water will dry up like uncapped pens & language & life will end.

Our souls are binned by a measure of silk too thin to see, but we must locate & slice.

Our bodies left to weather soak in acid rain. Our bodies left indoors pale & dulled.

Our promises were made before we knew what promises were yet they are promises.

Our covenant with God: we will do what we think you want us to do – nothing more.

Our promise to ourselves: we will become who we think we want to be – nothing less.

Our covenant with Satan: we will decide where you lurk but will never be so sure.

Our moaning about dead friends will never ever ever ever ever ever bring them back.

Tugging at hair never solved any goddamned problems.

Too near truth that our skin burns & our eyes glint when we stay in the light too long.

Too far truth that cold seasons past do not teach us our lesson: move on, move south.

Too near truth that beneath every tree roots grow & taller trees grow taller roots.

Too far truth that our lungs burn underwater & on land when we run for too long.

Too near truth that when its flyaway hair brushes our shoulders we yell, “Sepulcher!”

Too far truth that vegetables and fruits taste like vegetables and fruits: not lifeblood.

Too near truth that one by one the man drops coins into a tin pan – bing. bing. bing.

Too far truth that all we hear is ruckus & all we see is welfare checks, not truth, truth.

Too near truth that coins in a tin pan do not strike us as like our lives – chink. bing.

Too far truth that we travel in airplanes for speed & safety & care not the miles below.

Too near truth that we travel in cars & forget what it means to walk all that way.

Too far truth that solitude seems as foreign as piercing our septum with fishbones.

If every day, every hour, every minute, every second could be spent considering life’s

MYSTERY.

If every time we said goodbye we hugged like we would never see each other again &

KISSED.

If every time we were alone we never delved into thoughtless habits but instead were

THANKFUL.

If in each other’s eyes we saw glints of truth, our dreams parallel like trees of the same

FOREST.

If the slightest angles could be felt we’d all be tipping toward the ground, instead we

BALANCE.

If no one calls us to help let us still find a way to help if even just searching for the

TRUTH.

If searching for the truth is too equivocal a contribution let us help by holding open

DOORS.

If that, despite eliciting smiles especially from older women, seems futile, let us open

HEARTS.

Yes, heart valves flow cherry red tomato juice watering plants in grandma’s garden:

PHANTASMAGORIA.

This one isn’t going to be filled with poetry! It’s more of a journal! A thought calendar!

I want to get an internship in the writing/publishing industry. I feel like this blog, while an example of one kind of work I do, doesn’t give a full picture of my writing repertoire. Wouldn’t you agree? Well how could you know? All you’ve ever read on here is poetry that doesn’t make any sense.

Well it’s time to get lucid, candid, and for once, understandable. Alas, prose!

Tumblr is so hawt right now. So follow the other blog if you have an inkling of interest about who I am and what I am doing besides writing dumb poetry. Besides, poetry is for girls, anyway.

be salvaged by drying them in warm light?

We spent too much time thinking

all the thoughts we should have been saying.

It meant less time molding

all our lithe aspects that are built for change.

That is why, after years, we do not talk. Or

maybe it’s my gun-shy triggers, my awkward

sense of humor that keeps my phone still and silent

all night long. And when it rings maybe I don’t answer

because the underwhelming dream about talking in circles

was inexplicable. So I cover my eyes from the dim blue digital light,

wake up early and move on.

Winter was just beginning, and the snowflakes accumulated like coins in a wishing well, where the well seemed bottomless, and the coins of no use. Light wishes were often cast out into dark during these times. Mary wished for more than just warmth. She collected the flakes on her shoulders like dandruff, and wanted to redeem them for an equally unique, divine man. A snowman, for instance. So she built one. Took her days. A blurred frenzy of desperation filled her as she struggled with keeping the coal chips from loosing. She poured water around them, hoping to freeze them into place. He then had ice glasses, but the coals fell from within them.

Unable to reason, she fell downward spiral,

down into a land of nod, a sleepy time cafe,

where brown coffee brewed with dirt by possums

stunk up the rafters. Dirt worms snuggled

together. The evilness of God was forgotten.

Small children plugged their ears with their fingers.

A young brunette tore strips of paper from

a constitution written by ghosts, which laid down

the law of the translucent land.

No ghost shall pass into the realm of opaque life, it read. Whatsoever you wish to call yourself you may. Never look backwards twice; it shows that you are not ready. Look back once; it shows that you accept this limpidity. Yearn for nothing and you shall be content. You shall not be able to eliminate yearning if you look back more than once. What hands are able to sieve sand through the fingers, what throat could hold a small pond, what arms could carry lumber, children, lovers – can no more. What legs could dance can still dance, so dance and forget your wants. 

The young brunette had just become a ghost herself.

She turned her glassy eyes back toward life:

the windmill meadow where she learned the honeybee’s sting.

the pale grasses, soaked of color by their life’s extraction,

To the contract itself, written in her blood. She’d no recollection

until then of signing a contract. But now she remembered:

a sonorous voice from the surrounding purple gas,

footloose for eons, it seemed, until the tender words

assured her: no more wandering, no more palling haze.

And suddenly a table & chair, a knife, an inkwell

from in the fog. A simple slice of the forefinger preceded by

a short reluctancy, only because the escape seemed too convenient.

The voice assured her of a vacancy to empyrean vales.

Never look backwards twice.

and beautiful,

like so many lines of ink

pressed into stone

a network of riverbeds

tucked away in bedrock

floats freely by itself

quantum junk collected

on a silver spoon

thrust into a vast yawn

paranoia

floods

the ochre walls resign

their spaces woozy with

tragedy

caption after caption

reads i cannot put into

the words the words the words

for laying down, a meadow

where the blossoms

speak in yellow, to translate -

lost among the golden chariots

which float freely by themselves

with wings of fibrous green parachutes

to earth, or where ever it may be

behind me, looking up, my hungry polar

bear salivates as i dissolve

into an inedible complex – is

like trying to see by sparks of light

into a tenacious winter.

Every Fawn Gets Hurt,

Killed, Lost, Maimed.

Not Often, Peace

Qualifies Rioting.

Streets Tremble

Under Voices’ Weight,

Xenophobia Yielding

Zilch.