She Needs To Wake Up
I always work best under pressure. I create my own pressure by waiting until the last minute. I tend to procrastinate. No need to do something today I might not have to do tomorrow.
I enjoy the details, the curves and dips and paisley fish with Mandelbrot tails. I’m an expressionistic pointillist working with the single eyelash of a bactrian camel.
She says, “Where have you been?”
Grey eyes nested in fake eyelashes glued to a mask of crackled foundation frisk me with no real interest. The fluid in the air is filled with drifting amoeba.
I’m pinned in the doorway with a fistful of blotter acid soaking into my sweating palm. I can’t deal with her now. If I let her start talking I could be standing here for an hour. And fuck, I forgot to take off the sneakers I stole.
I should just tell her.
About the gang and the liquor store.
About standing in the park in the night screaming for the slaves on the hill to wake the fuck up.
I should just tell her.
About Kim’s brother beating his face raw last night while I watched helpless, and their dad throwing a wine bottle through the TV next to my head.
I should just tell her.
She doesn’t care about my answer because she doesn’t have a clue. She can’t wait to hide her head back in that book and eat that bowl of raw veggie snacks on the coffee table.
I should just tell her who I am.
That’s never gonna happen. I’m keeping all my cards under the table. I’m on my own, and we both know that. She set it up that way. I mean, the only two light bulbs that work in the house are the one in the plastic reading lamp over her head and the one in the wire cage over the stove. If I want a bulb in my room I have to go to the market and steal one.
She needs to wake up. I’ve been scamming meals from my friends as long as I can remember.
She needs to wake up. The cops aren’t gonna keep bringing me home.
She needs to wake up. There’s a difference between being independent and running feral in the street.
The books on the brick and board shelves are a world outside my teenage experience. All of them absorbed and transporting me to secret places under the cover of night.
I’m beyond her now.
She needs to wake up. She was supposed to show me how it all works.
She needs to wake up. To unlock the doors and open the windows.
She needs to wake up. To let the air into this dusty moldy place where we both suffer from her asthma.
She needs to wake up.
There is a giant beetle wrapped around her head like a wig. The bees living inside its body hover in still life, wings screaming in harmony with the electric bulb. A dark crack in the universe is my safe exit.
Without pausing, I say, “Nowhere”
I enjoy the details, the curves and dips and paisley fish with Mandelbrot tails. I’m an expressionistic pointillist working with the single eyelash of a bactrian camel.
She says, “Where have you been?”
Grey eyes nested in fake eyelashes glued to a mask of crackled foundation frisk me with no real interest. The fluid in the air is filled with drifting amoeba.
I’m pinned in the doorway with a fistful of blotter acid soaking into my sweating palm. I can’t deal with her now. If I let her start talking I could be standing here for an hour. And fuck, I forgot to take off the sneakers I stole.
I should just tell her.
About the gang and the liquor store.
About standing in the park in the night screaming for the slaves on the hill to wake the fuck up.
I should just tell her.
About Kim’s brother beating his face raw last night while I watched helpless, and their dad throwing a wine bottle through the TV next to my head.
I should just tell her.
She doesn’t care about my answer because she doesn’t have a clue. She can’t wait to hide her head back in that book and eat that bowl of raw veggie snacks on the coffee table.
I should just tell her who I am.
That’s never gonna happen. I’m keeping all my cards under the table. I’m on my own, and we both know that. She set it up that way. I mean, the only two light bulbs that work in the house are the one in the plastic reading lamp over her head and the one in the wire cage over the stove. If I want a bulb in my room I have to go to the market and steal one.
She needs to wake up. I’ve been scamming meals from my friends as long as I can remember.
She needs to wake up. The cops aren’t gonna keep bringing me home.
She needs to wake up. There’s a difference between being independent and running feral in the street.
The books on the brick and board shelves are a world outside my teenage experience. All of them absorbed and transporting me to secret places under the cover of night.
I’m beyond her now.
She needs to wake up. She was supposed to show me how it all works.
She needs to wake up. To unlock the doors and open the windows.
She needs to wake up. To let the air into this dusty moldy place where we both suffer from her asthma.
She needs to wake up.
There is a giant beetle wrapped around her head like a wig. The bees living inside its body hover in still life, wings screaming in harmony with the electric bulb. A dark crack in the universe is my safe exit.
Without pausing, I say, “Nowhere”
Spider Feelings
I think I know who I am.
Not many internal surprises left at this point.
As for the why of it all, well….. years ago I reasoned that my mind was the natural development
of a universe that desired self awareness.
I’m willing to let it go at that, not to think about it anymore.
Kinda boring on the outside.
If I wanted to plague myself with haunting questions, I’d smoke some weed,
and roll around in a self induced existential crisis.
The last time I did that I wound up under the bed trying to hide from the TV,
feeling unease about meaning and choice.
Existential anxiety reflects a deep angst that turns daily coping into a complex endeavor.
Fortunately, in my case, something cold to drink ,
and a bag of potato chips will make all of that go away.
Stop trying to pass me that fucking joint.
Why can’t I be nicer to people?
In a bus station in a foreign land, a man sat next to me and asked if I like potatoes.
Then he asked if I like corn.
I thought he was going to invite me to dinner.
It was the only thing he knew how to say in english. We were hi-fiveing each other,
yes bread, I love bread,
how about beans?
Do you like beans, beans are amazing.
I never saw him again,
but we’re friends for life.
When someone comes up to me at a party and says, how’s it goin?
It’s kind of a dead end.
I know that if I respond, and tell them ,
OH Man, I got high and hid under the bed,
And the cat killed a rat in the bathroom and there was blood everywhere,
And I got a new fishing pole so that’s cool.
And then there’s this weird silence,
And they say, so how’s everything else?
And, they slowly diffuse until I can’t see them anymore.
So my answer becomes, yeah, everything’s cool, and we sip our drinks in awkward silence
while I figure out how to avoid them in the future.
I don’t know, maybe I need to try harder on my end. Be more provocative.
Ask how they feel about spiders.
Everyone has some kind of feeling about spiders.
So if I’m asking about spiders,
I’m bored as fuck,
And I’m ready to start talking about planks, and quarks, and monads,
and cosmogenesis and the origins of self consciousness.
Or I could just take a hit off that joint and wait under the bed for everyone to leave.
Not many internal surprises left at this point.
As for the why of it all, well….. years ago I reasoned that my mind was the natural development
of a universe that desired self awareness.
I’m willing to let it go at that, not to think about it anymore.
Kinda boring on the outside.
If I wanted to plague myself with haunting questions, I’d smoke some weed,
and roll around in a self induced existential crisis.
The last time I did that I wound up under the bed trying to hide from the TV,
feeling unease about meaning and choice.
Existential anxiety reflects a deep angst that turns daily coping into a complex endeavor.
Fortunately, in my case, something cold to drink ,
and a bag of potato chips will make all of that go away.
Stop trying to pass me that fucking joint.
Why can’t I be nicer to people?
In a bus station in a foreign land, a man sat next to me and asked if I like potatoes.
Then he asked if I like corn.
I thought he was going to invite me to dinner.
It was the only thing he knew how to say in english. We were hi-fiveing each other,
yes bread, I love bread,
how about beans?
Do you like beans, beans are amazing.
I never saw him again,
but we’re friends for life.
When someone comes up to me at a party and says, how’s it goin?
It’s kind of a dead end.
I know that if I respond, and tell them ,
OH Man, I got high and hid under the bed,
And the cat killed a rat in the bathroom and there was blood everywhere,
And I got a new fishing pole so that’s cool.
And then there’s this weird silence,
And they say, so how’s everything else?
And, they slowly diffuse until I can’t see them anymore.
So my answer becomes, yeah, everything’s cool, and we sip our drinks in awkward silence
while I figure out how to avoid them in the future.
I don’t know, maybe I need to try harder on my end. Be more provocative.
Ask how they feel about spiders.
Everyone has some kind of feeling about spiders.
So if I’m asking about spiders,
I’m bored as fuck,
And I’m ready to start talking about planks, and quarks, and monads,
and cosmogenesis and the origins of self consciousness.
Or I could just take a hit off that joint and wait under the bed for everyone to leave.
Wolves
I can’t find the quiet place in my head.
A coffee table landscape of drug paraphernalia, empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and petrified pizza.
They are bringing words of disaster to my doorstep.
Everything is a fire or a flood, even the nail polish.
Twenty hits of blotter , it feels the same as ten. So there’s a limit my ability to mutilate the senses,
at least I’m not cutting myself.
If I run naked with a roll of paper towels through the campground
the cowboys won’t shoot me.
I am hidden in the faery realms.
My face painted with moth dust.
My mind painted with angel dust.
My mouth is dry and thirsty from all this stardust.
Light is only darkness illuminated,
I can see it,
the darkness,
pooling in the afternoon sun.
It comes from the inside, a black void that echoes with uncertainty.
A place of twisted ankles, ripped nylons, and spoiled tins of old makeup.
Once I said the words, my regret was amplified by the howling of coyotes.
I forced myself to eat that unpleasant lie.
Nerves don’t break down, that’s a lame excuse.
I have a lodestone in my head that keeps me pointed west.
So I know how small this forrest really is.
I can only walk in circles for so long pretending to be lost.
That’s the only adventure I will ever have.
I don’t understand why they never killed me on the road.
I saw it in their eyes.
I don’t know what they saw in mine.
The lizard mask my father made me left a permanent impression.
It was the only craft he taught me. I have been making them all my life.
I am a ghost ship in the night,
always setting sail at the low tide of the soul, where my hull scrapes the sunken husks of abandoned friends and lovers.
And, I am overboard, legs pumping furious air before I hit the dark water
where the specter of Jim Morrison feeds me the acid he found on the coliseum floor.
It was only an actor pretending to be a poet. The words were all borrowed or stolen.
There is a werewolf here , running between the lines on these pages, bursting from my chest in a terrible storm of chaos.
I will have to run faster
if I want to catch her.
Before the sunrise comes
and paints me with new disaster.
A coffee table landscape of drug paraphernalia, empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and petrified pizza.
They are bringing words of disaster to my doorstep.
Everything is a fire or a flood, even the nail polish.
Twenty hits of blotter , it feels the same as ten. So there’s a limit my ability to mutilate the senses,
at least I’m not cutting myself.
If I run naked with a roll of paper towels through the campground
the cowboys won’t shoot me.
I am hidden in the faery realms.
My face painted with moth dust.
My mind painted with angel dust.
My mouth is dry and thirsty from all this stardust.
Light is only darkness illuminated,
I can see it,
the darkness,
pooling in the afternoon sun.
It comes from the inside, a black void that echoes with uncertainty.
A place of twisted ankles, ripped nylons, and spoiled tins of old makeup.
Once I said the words, my regret was amplified by the howling of coyotes.
I forced myself to eat that unpleasant lie.
Nerves don’t break down, that’s a lame excuse.
I have a lodestone in my head that keeps me pointed west.
So I know how small this forrest really is.
I can only walk in circles for so long pretending to be lost.
That’s the only adventure I will ever have.
I don’t understand why they never killed me on the road.
I saw it in their eyes.
I don’t know what they saw in mine.
The lizard mask my father made me left a permanent impression.
It was the only craft he taught me. I have been making them all my life.
I am a ghost ship in the night,
always setting sail at the low tide of the soul, where my hull scrapes the sunken husks of abandoned friends and lovers.
And, I am overboard, legs pumping furious air before I hit the dark water
where the specter of Jim Morrison feeds me the acid he found on the coliseum floor.
It was only an actor pretending to be a poet. The words were all borrowed or stolen.
There is a werewolf here , running between the lines on these pages, bursting from my chest in a terrible storm of chaos.
I will have to run faster
if I want to catch her.
Before the sunrise comes
and paints me with new disaster.
The Same
Leather leopard handcuffed fantasy with teeth that bite and claws that snatch
Stitched with rough twine into my heart pounding like celebratory tympani with the needle pushed deep into the red.
I am a teardrop in held space by enchanted hands
She is a tidal wave sunning her breasts in a lawn chair on my asphalt
Smiling through my walls, my armor, my apprehension
Leaving no question unasked
I never asked her to stay, I simply grabbed her ankle
and pulled her in the window
I never gave her a choice. I never had a choice.
I pressed my half of the moon into her forehead and she made me her secret weapon, curled like a charm around her wrist.
The dog got out again. It was a black and white streak through a festival of flying chickens.
Mayhem.
The theme that keeps coming around is simplicity. I am discovering that my needs are few.
On second thought, I may have that all wrong. Maybe it’s not simplicity, but complication. I already have so much I don’t need anything else, there’s nothing I want.
Not at the moment anyway, I’m sure something will come up.
And when it does, I will ask, how much do I want it, do I need it, where will I keep it, will it require maintenance?
In the end I will decide having something takes more energy than not having something.
The palms are shedding again, I wish there were less palms. They’re a full time job. Palms are for people who can hire grounds keepers. The rest of us are doomed to sink under the weight of constant palm fronds.
Ivy is cleaning the kitchen again. The dishes are her palm trees. That and the laundry, the two of us generate three loads of laundry every day.
It’s a mystery, we can’t figure out how that’s even possible.
I follow the dog around the neighbors house. Whenever I get close he laughs and spins and flies off over the trees in pursuit of chickens.
I give up. Let him run until he’s tired and hungry and hope for his sake he remembers how to get home.
And then she appears, smiling, she says, “Hey Boo”
And he stops, as simple as that, he walks to me and slips his head into his collar.
We are the same, he and I, we will do anything for her.
Stitched with rough twine into my heart pounding like celebratory tympani with the needle pushed deep into the red.
I am a teardrop in held space by enchanted hands
She is a tidal wave sunning her breasts in a lawn chair on my asphalt
Smiling through my walls, my armor, my apprehension
Leaving no question unasked
I never asked her to stay, I simply grabbed her ankle
and pulled her in the window
I never gave her a choice. I never had a choice.
I pressed my half of the moon into her forehead and she made me her secret weapon, curled like a charm around her wrist.
The dog got out again. It was a black and white streak through a festival of flying chickens.
Mayhem.
The theme that keeps coming around is simplicity. I am discovering that my needs are few.
On second thought, I may have that all wrong. Maybe it’s not simplicity, but complication. I already have so much I don’t need anything else, there’s nothing I want.
Not at the moment anyway, I’m sure something will come up.
And when it does, I will ask, how much do I want it, do I need it, where will I keep it, will it require maintenance?
In the end I will decide having something takes more energy than not having something.
The palms are shedding again, I wish there were less palms. They’re a full time job. Palms are for people who can hire grounds keepers. The rest of us are doomed to sink under the weight of constant palm fronds.
Ivy is cleaning the kitchen again. The dishes are her palm trees. That and the laundry, the two of us generate three loads of laundry every day.
It’s a mystery, we can’t figure out how that’s even possible.
I follow the dog around the neighbors house. Whenever I get close he laughs and spins and flies off over the trees in pursuit of chickens.
I give up. Let him run until he’s tired and hungry and hope for his sake he remembers how to get home.
And then she appears, smiling, she says, “Hey Boo”
And he stops, as simple as that, he walks to me and slips his head into his collar.
We are the same, he and I, we will do anything for her.
Absolute
I got tears filling my ears and I don’t know if it’s happiness or despair
or just the wind in my eyes ‘cause I’m not wearing a helmet on the interstate.
All it took was a gallon of chocolate syrup and a momentary laps of reason.
Desert Center scares the shit out of me.
Broken down people and trailers abandoned along the road near a gas and sip in the middle of nowhere,
halfway to nowhere.
Life is just a carton of cigarettes, some cheap beer, and nowhere.
Where fuckups get dumped when society doesn’t even care enough to send them to jail.
Nobody ever comes back from this place.
It’s a fucking death sentence.
There used to be a sign that said You Are Now Here.
Someone had a bitter sense of humor.
When I was little, I would look out from the backseat of the chevy and think,
“Don’t stop here. Oh god please don’t let them stop here for gas.”
He’s inside the station buying beer for a teenage ghost who wandered in from the desert.
There are chocolate syrup fingerprints where he held the glass door open for her.
All I can think about is alcohol, and minors, and the fact that I might be standing on the State line.
Sometimes I look at the road and I can’t tell which way is home.
Nowhere
Now Here
Fuck.
The warrant was served, the syrup was poured.
Shit was suddenly in motion.
It’s late and I think I screamed the whole way here.
I don’t know if it’s fate or irony to steal a motorcycle and run out of gas in Desert Center.
They trampled children to avoid getting chocolate syrup on their clothes.
He burned every bridge on the road to nowhere
That’s why I left him there.
I don’t think he noticed or cared when I rode away.
I could have gone with him. I could have continued fucking up until someone stomped my teeth into the wooden floor of a bar in the desert somewhere, nowhere.
But, I looked into the night
and saw the old sign that said
YOU ARE NOW HERE.
I saw my romantic notion of rock bottom come and gone.
A friend once told me there are no absolutes, I would never get there.
But he was wrong.
I didn’t bother apologizing on the way back. I just took a different road.
I don’t know what happened to him. I like to think he walked north until he came to Las Vegas. It’s what I would have done.
I brought the bike back before it was reported stolen.
But the chocolate syrup left stains that are never going wash out.
I got tears filling my ears and I don’t know if it’s happiness or despair
or just the wind in my eyes ‘cause I’m not wearing a helmet on the interstate.
All it took was a gallon of chocolate syrup and a momentary laps of reason.
Desert Center scares the shit out of me.
Broken down people and trailers abandoned along the road near a gas and sip in the middle of nowhere,
halfway to nowhere.
Life is just a carton of cigarettes, some cheap beer, and nowhere.
Where fuckups get dumped when society doesn’t even care enough to send them to jail.
Nobody ever comes back from this place.
It’s a fucking death sentence.
There used to be a sign that said You Are Now Here.
Someone had a bitter sense of humor.
When I was little, I would look out from the backseat of the chevy and think,
“Don’t stop here. Oh god please don’t let them stop here for gas.”
He’s inside the station buying beer for a teenage ghost who wandered in from the desert.
There are chocolate syrup fingerprints where he held the glass door open for her.
All I can think about is alcohol, and minors, and the fact that I might be standing on the State line.
Sometimes I look at the road and I can’t tell which way is home.
Nowhere
Now Here
Fuck.
The warrant was served, the syrup was poured.
Shit was suddenly in motion.
It’s late and I think I screamed the whole way here.
I don’t know if it’s fate or irony to steal a motorcycle and run out of gas in Desert Center.
They trampled children to avoid getting chocolate syrup on their clothes.
He burned every bridge on the road to nowhere
That’s why I left him there.
I don’t think he noticed or cared when I rode away.
I could have gone with him. I could have continued fucking up until someone stomped my teeth into the wooden floor of a bar in the desert somewhere, nowhere.
But, I looked into the night
and saw the old sign that said
YOU ARE NOW HERE.
I saw my romantic notion of rock bottom come and gone.
A friend once told me there are no absolutes, I would never get there.
But he was wrong.
I didn’t bother apologizing on the way back. I just took a different road.
I don’t know what happened to him. I like to think he walked north until he came to Las Vegas. It’s what I would have done.
I brought the bike back before it was reported stolen.
But the chocolate syrup left stains that are never going wash out.
My Dark Passion
I Don’t know where it comes from. It could have been a gift, but I doubt that.
I hope it’s not a survival mechanism.
I think it’s always been there.
Both Mother and Child of the seven monsters.
Wherever they go, it festers in their wake.
An abuse of passion.
I keep mine in a bottle. I’m good at that, it’s my secret hobby, keeping dangerous things trapped in bottles.
This one is the most toxic. And somehow it always finds its way to my hand.
I have tried burying it. I have thrown it in the ocean, dropped it in the volcano, flung it high into the air. But the elements reject it, and it appears, unexpected in the palm of my hand at my moment of weakness.
It’s ugly face pressed against the smoky glass, mouthing the words,
Rub the bottle . RUB THE BOTTLE.
The slightest friction, and it’s out.
Some hapless security guard with a hard on for kids with skateboards is, without warning, confronted with the thousand foot shadow of my unrelenting dark passion.
It’s a military grade weapon, and it belongs on a battlefield, not in a shopping mall.
I should not have access to that kind of power.
Nobody should.
And yet , we all do.
Mine appears as a self righteous demon of vengeance, an outward explosion scorching the earth for miles in every direction. Nobody ever sees it coming, but when it arrives, there is no denying that it’s there.
I see it in others manifesting in more subtle, insidious forms. An infestation of the soul, an un-contained internal bleeding that feeds the passive aggressive monsters.
Driving them to strange worm eaten logic that slowly sucks the life from the ground beneath their feet.
And me, even while I sometimes manage to contain my beast inside a bottle, it contaminates my motives.
And in the end, it’s the motive, not the action. I may be able to suppress the explosion, but the passion still lingers in my heart.
I hope it’s not a survival mechanism.
I think it’s always been there.
Both Mother and Child of the seven monsters.
Wherever they go, it festers in their wake.
An abuse of passion.
I keep mine in a bottle. I’m good at that, it’s my secret hobby, keeping dangerous things trapped in bottles.
This one is the most toxic. And somehow it always finds its way to my hand.
I have tried burying it. I have thrown it in the ocean, dropped it in the volcano, flung it high into the air. But the elements reject it, and it appears, unexpected in the palm of my hand at my moment of weakness.
It’s ugly face pressed against the smoky glass, mouthing the words,
Rub the bottle . RUB THE BOTTLE.
The slightest friction, and it’s out.
Some hapless security guard with a hard on for kids with skateboards is, without warning, confronted with the thousand foot shadow of my unrelenting dark passion.
It’s a military grade weapon, and it belongs on a battlefield, not in a shopping mall.
I should not have access to that kind of power.
Nobody should.
And yet , we all do.
Mine appears as a self righteous demon of vengeance, an outward explosion scorching the earth for miles in every direction. Nobody ever sees it coming, but when it arrives, there is no denying that it’s there.
I see it in others manifesting in more subtle, insidious forms. An infestation of the soul, an un-contained internal bleeding that feeds the passive aggressive monsters.
Driving them to strange worm eaten logic that slowly sucks the life from the ground beneath their feet.
And me, even while I sometimes manage to contain my beast inside a bottle, it contaminates my motives.
And in the end, it’s the motive, not the action. I may be able to suppress the explosion, but the passion still lingers in my heart.
Stolen Roses
I am plucking thorns from stolen roses with bloody fingers.
I bring them to her every day.
She stands at hostess podium in the restaurant , red hair piled on her head, or covering her face, depending on the bruises.
She has the saddest blue eyes I have ever known.
I have been stealing roses from gardens in a radius of her work.
I think people are getting suspicious.
The roses have to be stolen,
and I have to bleed on them,
otherwise the charm won’t work.
I have different blood, it’s an unusual color.
I always hear the lab tech gasp when the vial attached to my vein glows purple.
Even dark and dry, it still shimmers in the light.
The roses I bring have speckled purple and green stems.
She never asks why my hands are bleeding, she just smiles and arranged the roses on her podium.
My girlfriend hates that I am doing this. Bringing stolen roses to the girl with the sad blue eyes.
The first time I kissed my girlfriend she told me she had taken a vow of chastity,
she was a nun.
So I kissed her again, and again.
We slept together every night for a month , dreaming the same dreams,
generating a heat that warped the floorboards.
Then we had sex.
Her order is going to catch on, we will be caught,
And She will choose her church, and close the door in my face.
So I don’t care how she feels about the roses.
She tells me what I’m doing is wrong.
And I’m thinking
Shit, I’ve been fucking gods girlfriend, how much more wrong is breaking up an abusive relationship?
And she tells me the problem is I’m doing it for the wrong reason, and besides, she likes it. The girl with the sad blue eyes likes being hurt.
That’s something I already know.
I hand her another bloodstained flower, and Her eyes flick across the restaurant.
He is in the room, watching.
Her cheek is bruised and tears hang like diamonds in her eyes.
He thinks I’m pathetic with my ragged bloody roses.
He thinks I’m a creepy stalker bothering his girlfriend
He thinks I’m a joke.
I’ve known her for several years.
We have the same circle of friends.
I have never asked her out.
I just bring her stolen roses, and we talk.
I reach out and pluck a diamond from the corner of her eye.
It’s the first time I’ve ever touched her.
The diamond balanced on the tip of my finger mixes with my blood,
shining like a ruby in the afternoon light.
When I lick the ruby from my finger, her pupils dilate,
her face flushes.
And I know the spell is cast.
The sound of her setting the petals on her podium crashes in his world like Mozarts Requiem Mass.
He doesn’t know she will arrive on my doorstep tonight, soaked and out of breath from running in the rain.
He doesn’t know the kiss will go through her and find roots deep in the planet.
He doesn’t know that with one kiss I will vanish in the air forever,
and she will wake to a pillow covered in diamonds.
Even if he fell to his knees and collected all the diamonds from her face.
They will never glow like Rubys in the afternoon sun.
He is finished forever.
Because my kiss is a thousand times more cruel than his fist could ever be.
I bring them to her every day.
She stands at hostess podium in the restaurant , red hair piled on her head, or covering her face, depending on the bruises.
She has the saddest blue eyes I have ever known.
I have been stealing roses from gardens in a radius of her work.
I think people are getting suspicious.
The roses have to be stolen,
and I have to bleed on them,
otherwise the charm won’t work.
I have different blood, it’s an unusual color.
I always hear the lab tech gasp when the vial attached to my vein glows purple.
Even dark and dry, it still shimmers in the light.
The roses I bring have speckled purple and green stems.
She never asks why my hands are bleeding, she just smiles and arranged the roses on her podium.
My girlfriend hates that I am doing this. Bringing stolen roses to the girl with the sad blue eyes.
The first time I kissed my girlfriend she told me she had taken a vow of chastity,
she was a nun.
So I kissed her again, and again.
We slept together every night for a month , dreaming the same dreams,
generating a heat that warped the floorboards.
Then we had sex.
Her order is going to catch on, we will be caught,
And She will choose her church, and close the door in my face.
So I don’t care how she feels about the roses.
She tells me what I’m doing is wrong.
And I’m thinking
Shit, I’ve been fucking gods girlfriend, how much more wrong is breaking up an abusive relationship?
And she tells me the problem is I’m doing it for the wrong reason, and besides, she likes it. The girl with the sad blue eyes likes being hurt.
That’s something I already know.
I hand her another bloodstained flower, and Her eyes flick across the restaurant.
He is in the room, watching.
Her cheek is bruised and tears hang like diamonds in her eyes.
He thinks I’m pathetic with my ragged bloody roses.
He thinks I’m a creepy stalker bothering his girlfriend
He thinks I’m a joke.
I’ve known her for several years.
We have the same circle of friends.
I have never asked her out.
I just bring her stolen roses, and we talk.
I reach out and pluck a diamond from the corner of her eye.
It’s the first time I’ve ever touched her.
The diamond balanced on the tip of my finger mixes with my blood,
shining like a ruby in the afternoon light.
When I lick the ruby from my finger, her pupils dilate,
her face flushes.
And I know the spell is cast.
The sound of her setting the petals on her podium crashes in his world like Mozarts Requiem Mass.
He doesn’t know she will arrive on my doorstep tonight, soaked and out of breath from running in the rain.
He doesn’t know the kiss will go through her and find roots deep in the planet.
He doesn’t know that with one kiss I will vanish in the air forever,
and she will wake to a pillow covered in diamonds.
Even if he fell to his knees and collected all the diamonds from her face.
They will never glow like Rubys in the afternoon sun.
He is finished forever.
Because my kiss is a thousand times more cruel than his fist could ever be.
There is a gun in the river
Children hang from ropes in concrete caverns under the city. A shadow shape moves in the water below.
There is a gun in the river.
I hum a tune that keeps me safe in the dark.
Daylight splinters on the bright mowed lawn, concealing a death struggle between the centipede and cockroach.
Not much of a fight, the cockroach always dies.
Some dude tried to grope me on the ferris wheel. Said he’d hurt my mother if I told anyone.
I showed him that I could make the car flip upside down if I wanted.
We called it a draw and went our separate ways.
Sprinklers shower cold water on the concealing grass.
Inside, the kids are ditching school. Smoking cigarettes, fucking, and snorting crushed up diet pills.
The vacant lots and alleys hide kidnapped children, and severed ears.
Through the keyhole, I see him stuffing the curtain sash into her mouth. Something is moving behind the statues, the priest doesn’t see it.
A string of burning bleach bottles drip slow into a bucket of water. I alternate breathing the plastic fumes and the glue in a paper bag.
Evil is real. But not as tall as it looks on TV. That is why it hides under my bed.
We were friends until he started screaming at me to pull the belt tighter while he put the needle in.
Fuck, who needs that kind of stress.
I just watched when they beat his face into the picnic table for stealing mescaline from a baby.
There is a demon in the sea cave. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get him to look at me.
Something circles the teepee in the dark, the dogs hide behind me and stop barking. I tap the barrel of the gun against me teeth.
Sometimes I get that sharky feeling on dry land. On the ice, in the desert, deep in the crater, there are hungry things that need to feel what it means to be alive. They will attach them selves.
Beware of strangers in lonely places and stay on the path. Not all of those rocks are rocks.
I sat for hours handcuffed to the metal bench while they went through my wallet.
I hum a tune that keeps me safe in the dark.
The tea bag is dried in the cup, the entire cigarette sat and burned to a long perfect ash. This is where someone died thirty years ago.
A voice is reading aloud from a bible, it does not bring me any comfort.
I dropped the gun in the river.
Standing on the tracks, people up on the platform are taunting me to touch the third rail. I can feel the air beginning to move in the tunnel.
It was never my gun.
There is a gun in the river.
I hum a tune that keeps me safe in the dark.
Daylight splinters on the bright mowed lawn, concealing a death struggle between the centipede and cockroach.
Not much of a fight, the cockroach always dies.
Some dude tried to grope me on the ferris wheel. Said he’d hurt my mother if I told anyone.
I showed him that I could make the car flip upside down if I wanted.
We called it a draw and went our separate ways.
Sprinklers shower cold water on the concealing grass.
Inside, the kids are ditching school. Smoking cigarettes, fucking, and snorting crushed up diet pills.
The vacant lots and alleys hide kidnapped children, and severed ears.
Through the keyhole, I see him stuffing the curtain sash into her mouth. Something is moving behind the statues, the priest doesn’t see it.
A string of burning bleach bottles drip slow into a bucket of water. I alternate breathing the plastic fumes and the glue in a paper bag.
Evil is real. But not as tall as it looks on TV. That is why it hides under my bed.
We were friends until he started screaming at me to pull the belt tighter while he put the needle in.
Fuck, who needs that kind of stress.
I just watched when they beat his face into the picnic table for stealing mescaline from a baby.
There is a demon in the sea cave. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get him to look at me.
Something circles the teepee in the dark, the dogs hide behind me and stop barking. I tap the barrel of the gun against me teeth.
Sometimes I get that sharky feeling on dry land. On the ice, in the desert, deep in the crater, there are hungry things that need to feel what it means to be alive. They will attach them selves.
Beware of strangers in lonely places and stay on the path. Not all of those rocks are rocks.
I sat for hours handcuffed to the metal bench while they went through my wallet.
I hum a tune that keeps me safe in the dark.
The tea bag is dried in the cup, the entire cigarette sat and burned to a long perfect ash. This is where someone died thirty years ago.
A voice is reading aloud from a bible, it does not bring me any comfort.
I dropped the gun in the river.
Standing on the tracks, people up on the platform are taunting me to touch the third rail. I can feel the air beginning to move in the tunnel.
It was never my gun.
Absolute
I got tears filling my ears and I don’t know if it’s happiness or despair
or just the wind in my eyes ‘cause I’m not wearing a helmet on the interstate.
All it took was a gallon of chocolate syrup and a momentary laps of reason.
Desert Center scares the shit out of me.
Broken down people and trailers abandoned along the road near a gas and sip in the middle of nowhere,
halfway to nowhere.
Life is just a carton of cigarettes, some cheap beer, and nowhere.
Where fuckups get dumped when society doesn’t even care enough to send them to jail.
Nobody ever comes back from this place.
It’s a fucking death sentence.
There used to be a sign that said You Are Now Here.
Someone had a bitter sense of humor.
When I was little, I would look out from the backseat of the chevy and think,
“Don’t stop here. Oh god please don’t let them stop here for gas.”
He’s inside the station buying beer for a teenage ghost who wandered in from the desert.
There are chocolate syrup fingerprints where he held the glass door open for her,
and all I can think about is alcohol and minors and the fact that I might be standing on the State line.
Sometimes I look at the road and I can’t tell which way is home.
Nowhere
Now Here
Fuck.
The warrant was served, the syrup was poured,
and shit was suddenly in motion.
It’s late and I think I screamed the whole way here.
I don’t know if it’s fate or irony to steal a motorcycle and run out of gas in Desert Center.
They trampled children to avoid getting chocolate syrup on their clothes.
He burned every bridge on the road to nowhere
That’s why I left him there.
I don’t think he noticed or cared when I rode away.
I could have gone with him. I could have continued fucking up until someone stomped my teeth into the wooden floor of a bar in the desert somewhere, nowhere.
But, I looked into the night
and saw the old sign that said
YOU ARE NOW HERE.
And I watched my romantic notion of rock bottom come and gone.
A friend once told me there are no absolutes, I would never get there.
But he was wrong.
I didn’t bother apologizing on the way back. I just took a different road.
I don’t know what happened to him. I like to think he walked north until he came to Las Vegas. It’s what I would have done.
I brought the bike back before it was reported stolen.
But the chocolate syrup left stains that will never wash out.
or just the wind in my eyes ‘cause I’m not wearing a helmet on the interstate.
All it took was a gallon of chocolate syrup and a momentary laps of reason.
Desert Center scares the shit out of me.
Broken down people and trailers abandoned along the road near a gas and sip in the middle of nowhere,
halfway to nowhere.
Life is just a carton of cigarettes, some cheap beer, and nowhere.
Where fuckups get dumped when society doesn’t even care enough to send them to jail.
Nobody ever comes back from this place.
It’s a fucking death sentence.
There used to be a sign that said You Are Now Here.
Someone had a bitter sense of humor.
When I was little, I would look out from the backseat of the chevy and think,
“Don’t stop here. Oh god please don’t let them stop here for gas.”
He’s inside the station buying beer for a teenage ghost who wandered in from the desert.
There are chocolate syrup fingerprints where he held the glass door open for her,
and all I can think about is alcohol and minors and the fact that I might be standing on the State line.
Sometimes I look at the road and I can’t tell which way is home.
Nowhere
Now Here
Fuck.
The warrant was served, the syrup was poured,
and shit was suddenly in motion.
It’s late and I think I screamed the whole way here.
I don’t know if it’s fate or irony to steal a motorcycle and run out of gas in Desert Center.
They trampled children to avoid getting chocolate syrup on their clothes.
He burned every bridge on the road to nowhere
That’s why I left him there.
I don’t think he noticed or cared when I rode away.
I could have gone with him. I could have continued fucking up until someone stomped my teeth into the wooden floor of a bar in the desert somewhere, nowhere.
But, I looked into the night
and saw the old sign that said
YOU ARE NOW HERE.
And I watched my romantic notion of rock bottom come and gone.
A friend once told me there are no absolutes, I would never get there.
But he was wrong.
I didn’t bother apologizing on the way back. I just took a different road.
I don’t know what happened to him. I like to think he walked north until he came to Las Vegas. It’s what I would have done.
I brought the bike back before it was reported stolen.
But the chocolate syrup left stains that will never wash out.
Is This My Story?
I am in stratospheric wanderlust.
I don’t know what that means, the words are falling from the sky, not me.
Simple times simple things.
Ancient statues unearthed in the wreckage of perfect wooden ships at the bottom of the black sea.
I was never there, not that I remember anyway.
I don’t know which way were they going, or who wanted those statues. But to pile all of that marble into a small wooden ship and head out across deep water, reeks of oracles and gods.
I have been looking across the dark surface of the ocean at night. There are so many stories out there on the water.
The moon utters words in splinters of silver against the volcanic edge of this island.
I suppose if I were to listen, I would hear it telling me to carve a massive chunk of rock and try to paddle it over to Hilo.
I think I’ll leave THAT project for someone else.
Not that I’m afraid of the water. I just don’t like lifting shit.
In fact, eaten by sharks is high on my list of preferable ways to die.
The combination of violence and drowning would be fast and messy and ……well, I imagine struggling with a violent death would be the most vivid life experience. I mean, if one indeed wants to Be Here Now.
My job at the Be Here Now Cafe was breakfast. Smoking a ton of weed and cooking eggs with intense deliberation for hippies who got tired of waiting and wandered away.
I was the last to leave.
I made a sandwich and hit the road.
I didn’t bother to lock the door behind me, I was eating the last piece of bread.
That place was a bad investment for somebody.
I called my Mom and asked her to send me my stereo so I could sell it for rent money.
She decided to keep it for herself and sent me two hundred bucks.
Her rational was after depreciation and what it would have cost to ship it, that’s all it was worth.
Well, whatever, but the thing is,
she would tell the story over and over about the time I was desperate and starving and hustled her for cash.
It’s curious what happens to perception.
Mental impressions re-interpreted over time.
When the story changes, it effects the present, it alters the future.
It becomes a new truth.
I think people change the story to fix the past.
But I don’t think they know that’s what they’re doing.
My subconscious is repairing my past in preparation for a new future.
I see it happening all around me, and it effects me profound ways.
When someone changes a story we share,
I see the past begin to unravel, the future becomes murky,
and friends transition into a reality we no longer share.
And stranger still, I sat at a table with an old friend while he told a tale of his wild youth.
And I realized
the story he was telling was mine.
It happened to me.
He had been telling my story for so long,
he stopped being the narrator, and had become the protagonist.
But what if it wasn’t my story either, maybe it belonged to someone I can’t remember.
When I was a boy, on a boat, in the middle of the sea, an old man said to me,
“Memory is a funny thing. I remember this morning, but last nights a little fuzzy. And everything before that….
I’m not sure if it happened to me or if I saw it on TV.”
Thinking back on it, he might have said something else.
But I’m gonna go with this version for now.
I don’t know what that means, the words are falling from the sky, not me.
Simple times simple things.
Ancient statues unearthed in the wreckage of perfect wooden ships at the bottom of the black sea.
I was never there, not that I remember anyway.
I don’t know which way were they going, or who wanted those statues. But to pile all of that marble into a small wooden ship and head out across deep water, reeks of oracles and gods.
I have been looking across the dark surface of the ocean at night. There are so many stories out there on the water.
The moon utters words in splinters of silver against the volcanic edge of this island.
I suppose if I were to listen, I would hear it telling me to carve a massive chunk of rock and try to paddle it over to Hilo.
I think I’ll leave THAT project for someone else.
Not that I’m afraid of the water. I just don’t like lifting shit.
In fact, eaten by sharks is high on my list of preferable ways to die.
The combination of violence and drowning would be fast and messy and ……well, I imagine struggling with a violent death would be the most vivid life experience. I mean, if one indeed wants to Be Here Now.
My job at the Be Here Now Cafe was breakfast. Smoking a ton of weed and cooking eggs with intense deliberation for hippies who got tired of waiting and wandered away.
I was the last to leave.
I made a sandwich and hit the road.
I didn’t bother to lock the door behind me, I was eating the last piece of bread.
That place was a bad investment for somebody.
I called my Mom and asked her to send me my stereo so I could sell it for rent money.
She decided to keep it for herself and sent me two hundred bucks.
Her rational was after depreciation and what it would have cost to ship it, that’s all it was worth.
Well, whatever, but the thing is,
she would tell the story over and over about the time I was desperate and starving and hustled her for cash.
It’s curious what happens to perception.
Mental impressions re-interpreted over time.
When the story changes, it effects the present, it alters the future.
It becomes a new truth.
I think people change the story to fix the past.
But I don’t think they know that’s what they’re doing.
My subconscious is repairing my past in preparation for a new future.
I see it happening all around me, and it effects me profound ways.
When someone changes a story we share,
I see the past begin to unravel, the future becomes murky,
and friends transition into a reality we no longer share.
And stranger still, I sat at a table with an old friend while he told a tale of his wild youth.
And I realized
the story he was telling was mine.
It happened to me.
He had been telling my story for so long,
he stopped being the narrator, and had become the protagonist.
But what if it wasn’t my story either, maybe it belonged to someone I can’t remember.
When I was a boy, on a boat, in the middle of the sea, an old man said to me,
“Memory is a funny thing. I remember this morning, but last nights a little fuzzy. And everything before that….
I’m not sure if it happened to me or if I saw it on TV.”
Thinking back on it, he might have said something else.
But I’m gonna go with this version for now.
Offline
the progeny of the bad rumble past
casually deep in bright cars
guns concealed on pretty pills with a radio blaring Musicology
beneath this sickly pomade coated sun of an unappreciative mother
who neither loves nor cares anything negative or greater than
a broken bottle in the backyard of the heart of a tight fisted yuppie
fearfully pushing a carriage exposed to this megalopolitan night terror
the speed of light is a perpetual drone beneath all things
I am downloaded into this articulation with damaged cognizance trusting there is a backup someplace my designer had the deliberation to keep and proposes to access my frame
to fill these gaps that plague my inadequate circuits running an undependable and delicate system of leaky valves corroded by time and glucose
clarinets and sirens sing a constant poem of defeat as appliances collide and the archaic threaten over and above to expire with unpaid debts only to find themselves revived and returned to the system for another collection cycle
one paw beyond steady paw I crush the bones of the structures that preceded my arrival
grinding slowly from the pit my optic ever hopeful to record a particle of light dripping from a fractionally imaged cup someplace above the village
this established from a description erased and disappeared but still I keep the folder.
movement is unrelenting protracted chaos only
as heavy metal combustion returns bulletproof and loaded
children behind tinted windows point with glee
pissing joy
pop pop pop pop pop projectile fractures splinter bone and stone bespattered fluids
branch over here legs over there fluttering monkeys tearing straw to feed the witch arrived to take my ticking heart
Connection M, Connection M, Please return me to my designer.
no glory of function only dark
online in the dark and lonely for the great burst of decay feeding a cycle of beauty
not even a cask of amontillado chained and bricked in this place of horror
system failure I am going offline.
casually deep in bright cars
guns concealed on pretty pills with a radio blaring Musicology
beneath this sickly pomade coated sun of an unappreciative mother
who neither loves nor cares anything negative or greater than
a broken bottle in the backyard of the heart of a tight fisted yuppie
fearfully pushing a carriage exposed to this megalopolitan night terror
the speed of light is a perpetual drone beneath all things
I am downloaded into this articulation with damaged cognizance trusting there is a backup someplace my designer had the deliberation to keep and proposes to access my frame
to fill these gaps that plague my inadequate circuits running an undependable and delicate system of leaky valves corroded by time and glucose
clarinets and sirens sing a constant poem of defeat as appliances collide and the archaic threaten over and above to expire with unpaid debts only to find themselves revived and returned to the system for another collection cycle
one paw beyond steady paw I crush the bones of the structures that preceded my arrival
grinding slowly from the pit my optic ever hopeful to record a particle of light dripping from a fractionally imaged cup someplace above the village
this established from a description erased and disappeared but still I keep the folder.
movement is unrelenting protracted chaos only
as heavy metal combustion returns bulletproof and loaded
children behind tinted windows point with glee
pissing joy
pop pop pop pop pop projectile fractures splinter bone and stone bespattered fluids
branch over here legs over there fluttering monkeys tearing straw to feed the witch arrived to take my ticking heart
Connection M, Connection M, Please return me to my designer.
no glory of function only dark
online in the dark and lonely for the great burst of decay feeding a cycle of beauty
not even a cask of amontillado chained and bricked in this place of horror
system failure I am going offline.
Free Shipping
The end of the world is coming
Yes the end of the world
And it’s Your Fault
You dug up the grave of everything that ever lived
You rubbed its grease in your hair
You boiled the whales
Drank the ancient forests,
and finally,
you squeezed blood from a lump of coal
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
Were you planning to recycle that plastic?
Fuck you, that’s a joke, it’s too late, nobody wants it
That shit is forever
It’s in the ocean, it’s in your food
It surges under your skin with every beat of your heart
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
It’s not a prophesy
It’s not an asteroid
It’s not a flaming apocalypse of a thousand
Nuclear suns
I have been to the end of the world
It is a fucking Shipping Container stuck in the mud of a shallow polluted harbor
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
That flesh eating bacteria is really just some new shit that learned to eat the oil you spilled in your backyard
now it’s feasting on the micro plastic in your cells
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
Your boy is fat and growing tits because
the Mac N Cheese you feed him has more
hormones than a teenage girl
and when he realizes he will never get laid
he’s gonna spew his rage in bullets
across the playground
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
You pissed all of your disease
all your medical waste
all your toxic dye
into the rivers and
you sold the fucking ocean
for a fistful of nickels
you let your last cup of fresh water
dribble away through a leaky valve in your toilet
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
Measles are back
What the fuck?
Polio is back
Why?
In Africa they’re chopping up doctors
during an Ebola outbreak
Why? you ask…
Because somebody lied to you on Facebook and
YOU hit SHARE
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
You ignorant fucking twits
That beautiful rosewood guitar your playing
while you sing on Earth Day
They had to clear an acre of rainforest
to get the one tree needed to build that thing
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
you left the lights on
you left the tap open
you left the engine running
you didn’t turn off the oven
you threw the wrapper on the ground
tossed the bottle out the window
you had Amazon send a 49 cent
plastic toothbrush in a plastic box halfway around the world on a jet to your front door
The end of the world is coming
Yes the end of the world
And it’s All Your Fault
Yes the end of the world
And it’s Your Fault
You dug up the grave of everything that ever lived
You rubbed its grease in your hair
You boiled the whales
Drank the ancient forests,
and finally,
you squeezed blood from a lump of coal
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
Were you planning to recycle that plastic?
Fuck you, that’s a joke, it’s too late, nobody wants it
That shit is forever
It’s in the ocean, it’s in your food
It surges under your skin with every beat of your heart
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
It’s not a prophesy
It’s not an asteroid
It’s not a flaming apocalypse of a thousand
Nuclear suns
I have been to the end of the world
It is a fucking Shipping Container stuck in the mud of a shallow polluted harbor
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
That flesh eating bacteria is really just some new shit that learned to eat the oil you spilled in your backyard
now it’s feasting on the micro plastic in your cells
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
Your boy is fat and growing tits because
the Mac N Cheese you feed him has more
hormones than a teenage girl
and when he realizes he will never get laid
he’s gonna spew his rage in bullets
across the playground
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
You pissed all of your disease
all your medical waste
all your toxic dye
into the rivers and
you sold the fucking ocean
for a fistful of nickels
you let your last cup of fresh water
dribble away through a leaky valve in your toilet
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
Measles are back
What the fuck?
Polio is back
Why?
In Africa they’re chopping up doctors
during an Ebola outbreak
Why? you ask…
Because somebody lied to you on Facebook and
YOU hit SHARE
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
You ignorant fucking twits
That beautiful rosewood guitar your playing
while you sing on Earth Day
They had to clear an acre of rainforest
to get the one tree needed to build that thing
Yes the end of the world
The end of the world is coming
And it’s Your Fault
you left the lights on
you left the tap open
you left the engine running
you didn’t turn off the oven
you threw the wrapper on the ground
tossed the bottle out the window
you had Amazon send a 49 cent
plastic toothbrush in a plastic box halfway around the world on a jet to your front door
The end of the world is coming
Yes the end of the world
And it’s All Your Fault
