Funny

I feel this rabid confusion settling into my brain, holding my breath for anxiety to pass like a kid in a car on a burning bridge. There's always someone there to make sure you're not cheating, sneaking little gasps of air through your nose while you choke on smoke and funnel hate through your irises. We're just along for the ride, right? It's all bullshit, it's all a lie, no matter whether you believe in truth. I've been drinking and dying trying to keep my tongue pushed back into my chest where it belongs. If only I could speak from the sternum, if only I could be as hard and brave and powerful as the bony armor over human hearts.
Funny how the tone in your voice changes. Funny how I shake when I taste the bile of words backing up in my esophagus. Funny how that infallible chest plate can snap with the right amount of force. If only I could recognize the pieces after fracture. Funny how things change.

Blacked-out

This is the only thing left after a week-long bender of swallowing heart and anxiety with a whiskey chaser. There's a shell here, but a shell is a place that used to be a home and I'm not convinced the name fits. The blurred truth I slurred through drunken teeth holds confessions of love and swearing sobriety, hanging like a blanket over my head, pulling my neck this way and that while heat builds with every exhale and loose strings fall in my eyes. This is the first step towards suffocation, the fabric calmly climbing up my neck until it pulls my lips apart with gentle cotton fingers and softly settles at the back of my throat. I'm holding my nose and telling myself it's not the end, I've swallowed sheets and pillows since childhood but I'm afraid there's no space left for oxygen. These are the last few minutes of frantic, and I will revel in the fireworks behind my eyelids. I will revel in blacked-out love.

Fever

I can leave you to yourself
You can keep the parts I left
Like the lingering scent
that you can't quite place
Like a memory that only fades

We all have trouble sleeping
None of us can make it through the night
We all have restless evenings
None of us can keep our eyes
Shut through the night

I can let you live alone
With the fever in your brain
I will cut dependency
Like a cancer from my veins
Like a memory that only fades

Like the image of my face
Through your irises at night
Blends together with the shadows
Oh, the lines around my eyes
Will sink into my skeleton
The lights along this drive
Will illuminate,
and find nothing.

Ocean

My eyes are covered in sand

I fashioned a mask, hardened with sun

that smells of a sickly sweet hangover coast

and shows me a silhouette, dark in the distance 

My eyes are covered in sand. 

My mouth is silenced with strands

You fashioned a needle, cooled with a kiss

threaded your hair in and out of my lips

and left me with meaning trapped under my tongue

My mouth is silenced with strands. 

So,

I captured a bottle of clear ocean water

and swallowed it deep in my chest

it stayed quiet and calm

when removed from its home

but the walls start to ache

from the crashing of waves

and the swelling of salt

and the moments of memory

and the hours of asphalt 

and drinking the sunset

puts salt in my blood. 

I feel the ocean, 

pushing out of my chest,

reaching for you. 

tunnel vision

I was alone and it was snowing. I rode my bicycle over creases in the asphalt that buckled up to meet my spinning spokes as they rose and fell with the consistency of a heartbeat. I ended at a restaurant, just a glorified bar where no one really expects you to order anything complicated – just fries and a beer, please. Maybe a double shot of plastic bottle whiskey if I’m feeling extra self-aware, a double dose of certainty that I’m alone and will be for a while. This place looked so damn cool the first time we walked in here, together, and yes, we’d like the patio seats; it’s such a nice night. We’ll spend too much money on watered down beer and pretend I’m not drunk when it’s time to drive us both back home. Our home, our overpriced, faux-chic apartment next to all the other families who can’t afford a house and want to act like they don’t want one when it’s really the husband’s blooming alcoholism or the wife’s shopping addiction keeping them from actualizing the title of “homeowner”. I’m getting off track.

I sat at the bar with a plate of half-frozen fries sprinkled with hypertension and a hint of future obesity and thought about nothing. This is something I’ve been developing recently, a talent I never thought I’d have: the ability to remove you and the years from my head for a few minutes at a time. It feels like Atlas shuffling the earth from one shoulder to the other, but it’s worth it - especially when I have my hands around the glass, slippery from condensation and concentration. I barely maintain any periphery, any awareness of any other sad fucking soul crouched over the bar like we’re all panning for gold with our pints and shots and fancy fucking martini glasses. I’m just trying to count the rings in the fake wooden bar in front of me – another beer, please.
I think she sat down somewhere after the fourth – not too far to catch up, if you’re really trying. She’s talking to me and I’m following her lips more than her words, the way they grip and grab each syllable before it tumbles out. I’m watching the way each word is shaped, molded, spit-shined before it hits my ears, and I’m in love with language. I’m in love with the ideas she speaks, but I can’t remember her name. I hope I’m responding, I’m never quite sure, but the sentences keep coming so I assume we’ve made it another moment further into the conversation. And another, and another, and another. It feels like I’m walking deeper into water with every sip, and I’d say it’s somewhere around my throat by now, that semi-frantic feeling where you tip your head back to gasp for air and stare at the sky like a cloud might see the whites of your eyes and let someone know you’re drowning. She notices my eyes sliding, notices my hand clutching the empty glass like I’m a cheating student reading all the answers by braille. She’s watching me and the water's up around my head now, so I feign surprise at my empty glass and signal the bartender. By the time I’m full, she’s gone, and I’m alone.

uncomfortable shifting

I used to think about death, your death,
dying suddenly in an accident and the process of coping with that loss

I used to think about devastation, hopelessness,
shaking in an emergency room while your body lay on a steel frame hospital bed

I used to think of you broken, as a shell
a shell made of flesh to contain all the love I felt

I used to think about our children, and the future
and the future that died along with your fragile frame

I used to think of how I would kiss your dying lips
Now I wish that I could lay by your side
For another night
For just another few hours of uncomfortable shifting
From side to side and wishing
Wishing I could get out of bed
and comfort a screaming child
Wishing I could stare out the windows of the house we bought together
bathing in the orange streetlight.

Dusk

I saw the color you love as the sun disappeared behind clouds. It was thick yolk slipping through syrup on my California approach, a sinkhole tugging great flat horizons of colors I've never been able to empathize with. Comprehending a thousand miles is violent and stunning and sits caged behind two thin layers of window suspended in the nowhere desolation as land slides sluggishly past my dark endless reference frame. The sunset was a framed picture spun at rapid speed and set into false motion, the illusion of escape before I let my mind wander to those minute connections that build into bullshit interpretations of fate and significance. Pockmarks of city grids flash into existence to spite this funeral for a sun and I can almost smell the city lighting its cigarette under a streetlight struggling for life. Dusk is a line in the desert for the boiling tar to relax with a shot of jet fuel and crossed fingers. 

Moments

She was crying so I flipped the switch to madness and leapt straight into the air, thirty thousand feet of troublesome sky. She stood in line to watch me go, waiting her turn with the ghosts I've left strewn across the country. The Atlantic looked on with disapproval, and I hoped I could find a piece of Pacific before word traveled that far. The light hits me square in the pupils so I reach for some mountain shade to pull over my head. I just need another hour's sleep and enough oxygen to last my lungs till landing. She dropped her wheels straight in California for the sickly sweet Oceanside style and some Oakland flavor, but I kept my distance and flew on over her head with all the world beneath me. 

It's three drinks before my mind slips out and I'm left with a vacant skull full of fading Northwest sun. Something restless is being painted on the cavernous cave that echoes with empty thoughts and she is the Michelangelo to my Sistine scalp. I am branded and collecting donations, a visitor's fee because no one gives a shit about beauty unless it costs something. 

No photography, please allow the moment to be a moment and hold your breath until it's done. Hidden in all moments is an expanse of experience that must be cradled as an infant. The lines she draws in cranial nooks follow her pattern of sweetness and there is too much beauty as layers of grey sink into bone like roots digging for water. The world has crowded in to watch, everyone minding their elbows and sneezing into palms slicked with anticipation and ignorance. The dull roar of thoughts hurtles ceaselessly around this bone canvas. Her tears fall as she paints and I stand in line to watch. 

This is

So this is today. 

We are mountain fog and misty thoughts, coming down incessantly. 

Coming down from atmospheric heights, pure perspective miles above our surface

Lending gravity to the weight and fall of each drop. 

Aiming for water, not land. 

Hoping for ripples, not craters. 

Soluble missiles, dead in the water, muffled communication. 

Sound travels through blades of grass and echoes across asphalt quicker than swamps and silt. 

So we aim for water, not land. 

Drain the lake or walk on top. 

Absence

I feel the ache of absence

Without the parallel bars of twin lives

Instead of straddling supports,

I try landing on my feet

But the earth is warming, 

Bringing groggy contentment and treacherous sweat

Making every step a game

Of easy smiles and ground-floor memories

As I grind my teeth

To the rhythm of typewriter keys

My roots expose

And twist in nervous numbness 

A roadmap of shock

Sending grey to my eyes

As the keys type goodbye,

I escape to a bar named You

And stare at the answers,

Swimming in alcohol. 

Summer

I'm riding in the backseat, with my arm out the window and almost too cold summer air filling my vision. The street lights flash orange-tinted images of my veins and the color staining my skin; a tree with roots running through the back of my hand and down each finger. I turn decay to oxygen and spread my limbs to the black sky. 

Pacific

I have Southern California sand 

between my toes

Carefully carried cross country

To bring Pacific back with me. 

Expanse

The grey span of earth, laid out beneath me

And dirt roads that cut 

Like capillaries

As monstrous cotton covers peaks and ridges

Endless expanse. 

Fear like photography

There's a fucking half smile on every stranger

And It makes me sick with jealousy

Of everyone who sees your lips

without fixating like this

I develop fear just like an allergy

Listening to songs about hope

And hating myself for apathy

There's a look on everyone around me

And it tells me I'm crashing

There's a book open in front of me

But every word I read is you

Every word is you

I'm holding fear just like photography

Snapshots of doubt

I just can't throw away

I'll keep thinking poison

Sketching fear with ink

A tattoo made of shades

To let you get some sleep

Linger

We are strange and made of extremes

Like mud-filled patterns, boot-stomped trails

Aches following steps

Unnamed scratching beneath the surface

Hidden bridges and rope swings 

Staining each page

As my fingers linger on dog eared corners

We talk in conversations around each other,

Never direct,

Betraying our selfish,

Licking the razor and holding our breath for the endless moment before the skin separates and nerves tell the brain:

"This is pain. This is how you should feel."

This feels like a swan song,

And it reeks of borrowed time. 

I just want to know the ending. 

Do I go like a bird in midair?

Or a cat searching for a place to die?

Poetic Conclusions

We share the same sky

The same smoke, the same lie

Walking concrete divisions 

Of hurt and goodbye

Our secrets are turning

On desperate pages

The tree blooms above

The flowers below

We tread the damp earth

Soon drying to desert

Among history's names

Of death and of life

The bridges are building

Through hungry ambition 

Their cables suspended

 On oceans of white

We hold the same treasure

A twisted cognition

Condemning a future

Of hope and grey skies

Our speed turns to liquid

Fills wide dusty canyons

With hot summer air

And pacific blue eyes

We read the same tombstones

Poetic conclusions  

Of dust and despair

In an ocean of time. 

Evergreen

I know the meaning of strung out, and I am stretched and pulled along a wire above the valley, a push and pulley system of gears and mechanics without thought. I swallow words and regurgitate graphite from my swollen veins. Heart beats on steady increase, powdered luck in a caldron mixed with a hit of hope and "just hold on." These are weeks of loosening grips, taking pliers to fingernails to scissors to knuckles to inevitability. Evergreen reminders and coastal promises relinquish the weight from my hands, and I willingly let go.  

A Line and a Leap

This is hysteria, full of mistakes and potential and recklessness and meticulous avoidance. There is a weight hiding in eye sockets, pressing onto my brain. Concussive repercussions follow at every step, every intentional crack under my soles travels up my spine and taps into yours. The sidewalk stretches for miles, a concrete horizon fading into future and my steps press backward from progress. My steps press backward from sanity, from storms, from stop lights and crosswalks and asphalt trails to somewhere. At the edge, looking over six lanes of danger, a line and a leap into nothing. 

This time

All I have are secondhand friendships with diluted fucking memories of events that haven't happened yet. There is invitation and rejection; inhalation and smoke. I watch flipbook representations of how I used to be, mixed with spite and anger and connections gone wrong. This is no response, but it is an expression. I hide behind doors, long silences barricaded behind locked handles and ignorance. This is it. This is who I claim to be and I can't wait to see how the rest of my life doesn't turn out. I hear voices and I know I have to run. There is nothing to keep me except a paperback copy of On the Road. Maybe I'll end up running this time. 

Hope

I'm breathing the last clean piece of oxygen. It tastes sweet and stale, like ink confessions in paperback sarcophagi. I've got vaccines and ballpoint pens spread in front of me, trying to remember which goes in my veins. 

I'm breathing the last clear breath of air. It feels like little feet walking over bridges, scaring birds away and smiling back at me. I've got images of love and potential growing in front of me; let them stay happy, let them stay. 

I'm holding life in my lungs, and it reminds me of childhood happiness and childhood destruction. I see myself replicated in every state, parallel persons without a chance. Pain begins earlier these days; there are only so many trees you can climb before you're covered in splinters and regret. I just hope there's a home for healing. I just hope there's a home. 

Cigarettes

There are curtains drawn in defiance, windows to gather dust behind sweating summer glass. He holds hot air between his fingers, just an addict wishing for cigarettes in a room filled with sepia-toned memories. Light drips through stained cotton, years trapped behind a dirty filter, a world of curling grey. He feels the missing smoke in his lungs, missing shortness of breath. The tar lining his lungs reminds him of streets, reminds him that the world is no longer ashes to ashes; it is filth to filth. He ignores the air filling his chest. His veins stand independent and aloof, branching side street capillaries and Main Street arteries pulling for fruitless horizons, trapped behind a cage of skin. He rolls thoughts between fingertips and imprints messages like a blood pact. His eyes close as his mind runs mountain ranges. He ignores the air filling his chest. 

Synapses

I can't sleep with this grey shit pouring out of my ears so I donated what was left of my brain to the national trust. Maybe they'll put pieces in glass cases and I'll get to show my children how fucked they'll be someday. Destruction catches up to everyone eventually and my legs are getting tired. My feet scorn opposition from sidewalks, pleading to sink into soothing concrete, anything to find rest from motion. Let me find those spaces between molecules and claim my new place among nothing. I'll be a squatter in the space between matter, an ethereal bum in a subatomic city where I will be beaten with synapses and left for dead.

Curb pillow

You wanted something beautiful, so I stole hours and buried them in dirt and called it art. Running in the rain, slipping and tripping away from the world, and you were right. This would make a good song, if I could inhale enough air to replace your breath in my lungs. Instead I mainline saliva like a junkie in a parking lot and rest my head on concrete. 

Sleepless shifting disturbs the dust that has settled on my body while I wait out my blackout. I rearrange my curb pillow and give a few extra hits of skull to concrete just to drive the point home. There is more than body and mind; there is body and all of my fragmented minds splintering in pieces among cracked leaves and oil slicks. I am laying on train tracks, I am motionless and tunneling deeper into conscious oblivion and I've never cared less. 

Valley floor

I wrapped this ribbon round my finger, and I chase your voice with whiskey

Let it cut into my skin, watch the white come rushing in, a way to pass the time

In a minute I'll go numb

And forget how it was

To feel my fingertips 

People dying all around me,

And I don't know how to feel

Just keep hoping and dreaming 

that my memories are real

You've been dying for so long

That I'd nearly forgot

But your heart gave out,

And you fell to the ground

I am passing blues beneath windows,

Blending in with ghosts

I am valley floors and mountain slopes,

Rising into grey

Patterns

I place a hand over my forearm and scratch white lines into color stained skin, a fingernail trail carving love into a tree. Cursive confessions against scar tissue fade to the flushing red of broken capillaries as swelling skin buries secrets in Braille. I close my eyes and trace the skin, watching patterns of release shining bright behind eyelids, and I hold my breath until stars explode in dramatic illumination of fading words. Distant pain remains, and I scratch a reminder not to forget.

curling shadows

There are memories taking the shapes of shadows and curling in lazy, arrogant fashion. I suppose staying motionless is my form of acceptance. Accept the soft curves of smoke, kissing my forehead and beckoning upward. Accept the ascent toward sky; this smoke will collide with the ceiling and remain. I inhale deeply. I push the two halves of my fragile brain together behind my ribs and hope it remains intact; I will not lose myself when I lose my lungs. But I exhale and watch sharp shards of glass veiled in smoke, hiding in shadows until incandescent lamps expose their escape brilliantly. I am stone on the ground and I do not care to retrieve them, so I wait for myself to float back to me. I watch the room grow hazy with each exhale. I watch the ceiling sparkle with fugitive fragments, and I sink into absent memory.

Tracks

These train tracks remind me of you
Every jump between gravel and steel
Clicks a morse code message
Like the cadence of words
Cartwheels from tongue to teeth

I stare at passing blues beneath windows,
Blending into ghosts
I stare at valley floors and mountain slopes,
Rising into grey

These train tracks remind me of hands
And every gap between fingers
Filled with loving knuckles
Bent like knees in prayer
Pleading to something inevitable,
A straight shot of hope.

Borrowed light

I have summer tucked into a vial
three weeks until it circles through my bloodstream
Waves of heat will fuse rubber and asphalt
And thoughts I have beaten and left to the spiders
will radiate heavy with sun
I scratch color from my skin with anticipation
My summer drug waits to be swallowed.

connection

what if I don't exist outside this connection?
there is nothing left to give, there is only time to lead to slaughter
I have the perfect little guillotine, fashioned out of apathy
and I wait for it to drop

something different

How much can you see through this foggy, fucked up window?

How far can your eyes trace the mountain through the clouds?

How many turns will we place upon this path

That is made of scattered stitching,

Tattered patchwork in the light

There is color staining grey, and I welcome the departure

There can only be so many ways to bring the dead to life

I hope it will not injure, but it surely cannot heal

As the fire burns,

The glass divides,

The smoke is sending signals

Like ravens in the night

As the fire burns,

And the glass divides,

The smoke sits on our blackened lungs

Like ravens in the night.

Bones

Oh, I saw you as a broken little bird
I saw you as my own
Oh, I held you in my careful little heart
I held you as my own

And I feel your eyes follow me
Back to nothing
I taste clouds of red wine
On your sweet summer breath
Tilt the glass and I am gone

Oh, you touched me like a savior on my skin
You pulled me to your chest
Oh, you shifted and sunlight caught your eyes
I saw your tattered wings inside

And you ran for the door without looking behind
And I still smell the rain and that sweet red wine
That stained our lips in summer

We got caught in the fence,
Trying to get out,
Trying our luck in the storm
We got stuck in the ice,
Trying to run,
Holding our breath for warmth

Oh, I see you as my broken little bird
I hold you as my own
Oh, I know you, I feel you in my bones
I feel you in my bones.

dream

This dream happened the morning of April 1^st, 2014, around 5:45am.

We were standing in the kitchen of a house that glowed with life and pulsed in the hot summer afternoon with a deep golden yellow. The air was thick and the breeze hung lazily as it wafted from room to room through screen doors and cracked windows. The kitchen seemed illuminated as vaulted ceilings caught glimpses of sunlight reflected off the island in the center of the room. At the edge of the kitchen, a hallway began and angled out of sight after a few feet. We were smiling and happy, showing teeth and laughing easily in our warm contentedness. 

Suddenly, two pigeons flew into the kitchen near the hall. I headed toward the birds to try and direct them back outdoors, but they bolted in opposite directions. The larger bird went directly for the screen door and proceeded to get terribly stuck, while the smaller bird went down the hall and out of sight into the bedroom on the right side. (Somewhere in here I decided the larger bird was “he” and the smaller “she”.) He struggled frantically, flapping his wings and scratching his feet, but he was not attempting to free himself from the screen; he was pushing through to escape outside. After a few helpless moments of watching, he slipped through the screen door and left behind a large clump of feathers and body parts. His body was now damaged, but completely white; he had transformed upon escape. There was no blood or gore, but the remnants stuck straight out of the screen as though he had shed an outer shell. 

As he flew out of sight, I shifted my attention to the female bird. I ran down the hall to the bedroom and turned in time to see her circle the ceiling, hit the wall, and fall into a corner. I rushed over and picked her up in my hands, cupping her wings together delicately to keep her safe. 

Upon leaving the bedroom, I walked past another screen door in the hall. Immediately outside the screen was the male bird, badly injured and barely able to fly. I could see anguish fill her face as soon as the tiny bird saw her partner through the screen, and she began struggling against my hands so vehemently that I lost my cautious grip. She shot out of my palm and became stuck in the mesh exactly the way the male bird had done before, and I watched another vicious struggle against the screen. As she fought, there was a burning intensity in her stare as her own shell of feathers and skin was slowly torn away until she broke through. 

With her last bit of strength she flapped tattered wings and rose to meet him, floating sluggishly on the warm current of air. A metamorphosis had changed frantic pigeons to shattered doves, and they shined a beautiful white glow as they rested against each other. They gently met each other’s cheeks and closed their eyes as life began to leave their bodies. Their flapping slowed in synchrony, and they fell together in idle circles until settling motionless on the ground. I looked at you, standing across the room, and the shock on our faces melted to sadness as I woke shaking in bed.

ours and not mine

There are no answers, I am selfish and drunken and smoking cigarettes with ghosts behind the clear glass of airport smoking booths. I trade smooth filters and notice lipstick; I extinguish the ember and wrap the treasure in a napkin scrawled with black ink. I am twisted and squeezed while my tubes are replaced with wires and synapses fire shots into the back of my throat. I plug in, sit down, and shut up, letting my fingers tickle my vocal chords in their halfhearted attempt to read braille. Fruitless, they scramble down further to find stomach acid without clarity, scramble to find a fingerhold that can feel something. I read their skewed translations, their feedback reports, and I feel helpless and heavy with addiction. Scan my chest, pull apart the hinges and sketch photographs of clues, trace the organs without clarity. I am lucid, I am staring at fluorescent sky, I am flat against the wall and spinning. I flick the matches in my palm, long since beheaded and useless, and I remember asphalt in parking lots. The ringing in my ears leaves a trail of fucking breadcrumbs on the shoulder of every highway, down the wing of every plane. Cyclical and beautiful, at least I’ll be able to get back somewhere.

I think I'm too drive to drunk.

I can feel that current fill my chest
And it smells like asphalt and shifting gears
It tastes like reckless and air pushing back
Taking wasted oxygen and replacing with sweet euphoria
Maybe it's the coffee talking
Maybe I'm an addict
Maybe it's last night's whiskey flowing
Straight down my fingers
Across the steering wheel
And into the engine.

This is meta, right?

I've been feeling something less than beautiful
Standing between distortion and escape
I've been clipping stitches from my lips
Just an inch for my lungs
And I taste the air
Just an inch for my tongue
And it sways in rhythmic circles,
A raindance to the sky
I sway in rhythmic circles
Of hellos and goodbyes.

Clouds swell with sentences
Oxygen thins without breath
I exhale euphoria,
Mixed with sedatives and irony
And let these vague fucking phrases continue their attempt to represent something meaningful. And I edit this because I can't let myself show anything less than meticulous word choice and structure.

And somehow, it still helps to write.

Buzz

Sweet nothings fill my head.
The sweetest words have silence behind them, and my ears have been ringing for a lifetime with a beautiful buzz.

I raise my fist in a room full of strangers, in a city unknown, and I feel unity.
Drunken, slurring unity.

It is a false representation of something I grasped just long enough to know what fell through the cracks.

Stoned happiness, something like acquiescence, an imitation of that buzz in my ears.
A sound persisting through each new place I place myself.

Holden

Next time,
I won't sit across from the window
So you don't have to see the light in my eyes
And next time,
Maybe I'll just keep them shut.

And I can't wait
till my hair goes grey
and I don't recognize my family
And I can't wait to forget you
And I can't wait to forget you

There's a lot of "too soon" and not enough "someday"
It's like winter with no fall
And the shadows are leaving their corners
and I'm scared that it's my fault

And your name
catches in my throat
With a choking melody
And I want to swallow
but I'm scared to lose
The parts of you trapped in me

Fading

Last night I dreamt the sutures
Fell from our lips
And our atrophied tongues
Lay limp behind teeth
I dreamt enamel cages
Decayed throughout time
Exhaling clouds of a beautiful grey.

As ghosts fade to shadows
Retreat from the sun
They leave whispering darkness
And lingering smiles
And threats of returning
With sharpened words
And weakening wills

parking lots

Well I guess this is honesty
Or at least my attempt
I've got this grey space inside of me
And it's filled with contempt

For the phone calls in parking lots
I never wanted to make
And the weeknights alone in bars
With thoughts that I couldn't shake
Thoughts that I couldn't shake

Well I guess this is for the best
Or at least it's for now
I'm losing memories of sunrises
Wishing you'd shown me how

Not to fuck things up again
And stop making casualties out of friends

I'm begging strangers for lighters on the train
Bumming cigarettes off your ghost
Filling the asphalt with ashes
Explosions in the street
I want to watch it all burn down

Well I guess this is honesty
Or at least my attempt.

strike anywhere

There is no more waiting in parking lots, sharing cigarettes with your ghost. The asphalt took some salt and saliva that I’ll never get back; pieces of me left behind like decaying bread crumbs dropped in case I found myself somewhere far away. It’s a pentagram, a sacred circle, or just a pile of garbage waiting for a gust strong enough to shift into another parking space. This was hallowed, wasted, beautiful earth that has been flattened and pressed and turned into a cemetery for bad ideas. Aquamarine stories and deep shoulder sighs meet long stares and solemn tones; it’s pretense and pretend, it’s real and relevant, it’s hurt-or-feel-nothing ultimatums that lay scattered across the white stripes keeping everything contained and organized. When your foot presses the accelerator, when my hand shifts metal into gear, the ground feels smooth and natural beneath the tires, physically effortless but mentally it’s Atlas shifting the world an inch to the right so his shoulder can breathe. I know the asphalt is an illusion; I know if those tires were replaced with my knees they would slowly drag and rip, cartilage cracking and tendon snapping with my two thousand pound metal cage pressing down to meet every crack and crevice, every steamroller signature carving into weak flesh. There is no more waiting in parking lots; there are loitering ghosts that never have a fucking lighter when all I need is a box of matches and your phone number on the side that says “Strike Anywhere”.

mind

Traveling years in time
I have been someone else and seen myself in many lives
Tossed on wind and rain
But threads connect each mind
Back to mine

There's a strange sense of settlement
With a backing throb and pulse
And rolling mountains under storm
Wave the sunset back and forth.

Empty spaces

I am checking empty spaces
Vacant with purpose
I am finding new cobwebs
Tracing spider spines

There is clarity among the dust
Wrapped tight with web and saliva

I am pouring wax onto liquid crystal
Divining hieroglyphs
I am three lines from goodbye
And I cannot reach through the cracks

Cough syrup

Silently striped with streetlight window painting, I stand near my borrowed bed and stare at the nearsighted fuzz of solid objects around me. I see my future laid out in tea leaves, hazy and steeped in green cough syrup. My finger swirls liquid and I drink before answers dare to show themselves. I am released from the harness of consciousness into free fall.
I run through traffic and stop in the center of 90th and State, an intersection amphitheater for this typical tragedy. I face twenty lanes of traffic but need just one open window, one purple striped painting that I will cling to and consume exhaust until my oxygen is replaced. I trail behind as body and asphalt meet and explode, sparks of spine littering the eastward climb toward somewhere.
I lay alone, lips melted onto metal, and breathe a forgotten pixie scent mixed with poison. I let lenses settle over my eyes and there are no objects, just familiar outlines. Veins like interstates, I will follow as far as my lungs allow.

Violence

Last night I dove my head deep into rough grey fibers
And let them touch my skin as if they were your fingertips
A moment of connection threw my head back with violence
And chaos turned to structure turned to flushing heavy breaths
Spread apart and pulled in direction with your eyes
Nothing close to normalcy, you held the weight of fate
A moment of another world threw my dream away with violence
And the silence in this borrowed room was broken empty space.

oxygen stains

When there is no sunrise
The world is our grey
A place I have learned to love and hate

I am glad I am blind
I can press these pieces of your spine against my irises
Mirror shards from my throat
Show me outlines of your face

When there are clouds
The pieces have been buried
Carefully placed between love and hate

You breathe into my mind
And I collect oxygen stains across the dome of my skull
Patterned reminders of haze
Bring the scent back to my face

Treasures

There can be happiness and decay
But I remember what I have seen
There is no need for color
When black and grey hold treasures.

When need fills the atmosphere
My veins slow to a seething crawl
And I will speak,
Even if there is no reply.

normal

I see you all around me
You are strangers with masks
Molded copies of your face
And there is beauty,
Even in false representation.

I see the world going around
You are newfound vertigo
Rolling eyes in my head
And there is oxygen,
Even without air.

Cocktails

I have been chewing on your lip
Tasting bitter flakes of skin
And a salty sunrise in the east

I have been chewing on filters
Tasting arsenic and cancer
Lacing cotton between teeth

These words are grotesque plastic
Melting as a twisted conversation
Their shape is madness and rhythm
Their stems are thick and I sharpen my teeth

I have been chewing on your lip
And I taste dirty tavern floors
A cocktail of dust and blood.

Receipts

All I have are receipts
Tucked into pockets
Framing moments and the in-between
I wear clothing to match
And keep my eyelids tattooed open

I have lost your scent
So I crawl under the table
Searching for plastic reminders
With a hazy drunken wish
For you to meet me on the floor
In our vacuum of irises and apologies
and our own inevitable grey
I've built a fort the color of sunrise,
like postmortem veins pumped free of blood.

raven

If Van Gogh can sever his ear and still create

Who am I to think I cannot blindly make

Something disgusting and selfish

Covered in blood and bile

Held out to you as a cat brings a dead raven

Or digs a hidden tell-tale heart

To lay at your feet and wait for praise.

ex nihilo

There was nothing to lose

And nothing to gain

And nothing is nothing

And nothing has changed

I gave nothing to you

And you must have done the same

While I stared at the sun

You called on your wind

And swept me away

split between

In my dream
I watch you slip from your ladder
I wet the rungs with honesty
and grey salt for your wounds
I watch understanding fill your eyes 

as I bite your fingernails to flesh

When there is nothing to grip the soft wood
of your boring perfection
I will be the gravity that pulls you
not to salvation
not to damnation
not to happiness
but to the impact of the words you dared to speak

The spine you claim to have
will split between love and distraction

#selfish

This bottle is my own

And I thank the clouds above me

That I am selfish and cowardly

This ribbon stays tight

Around my finger

And I chase your voice with whiskey

There is a timbre in my chest

That reminds me of you

It smells of Pixie dust and loathing

There is a drawing on my shelf

That was made by your hand

And it shows your moth

meeting my flame.

heredity

Like father, like son

Homeless and wandering

Retreating to known

And eschewing the rest

Like father, like son

We are tangled fibers

Of drugged decisions

And paralyzing doubt

Like father, like son

I drink and run

While he sits and sinks

And we both stay still

Like father, like son

I replace synapse with smoke

Pack a few clothes

And leave home

Like father, like son

We look at the ruin

Shrug our shoulders

And meet in the valley

Away from the sun.

Blind

I stare at every car that passes
I wait for what I do not want to see
I sweat blood mixed with sin
And the sidewalk bucks and spins

I watch each spinning wheel
From behind drunken slurs
My throat is full of smoke
And shards of deceitful mirrors

I thank the sky above that I am blind
Without these mirror pieces pressed against my eyes
I pray to no one and nothing
But I am bound by the same fate
Rejected years ago

I hate the state you tainted
I hate the words we spoke

Remember ruin

I made a promise I couldn't keep
As my blood ran grey
As I clung to the valley
And it burned with the dawn

I promised both worlds,
Their best and worst
To keep the flames
Behind tattooed lines

I promised a sunrise,
Harmless at most
To flood the sky,
And blind our ghosts

When the last strips of dawn
Shattered the ridge
The flames and ghosts ignited
No promise kept, or choice maintained
My blood burned out and faded away.

Dammit

I want to be that damn grey fabric
Directly on your skin
I want to scratch till you are raw
And the red rushes to your edge

I am surprised at how you make my fists clench
Fingernail depressions in my palm
Leave tracks behind

They have split you in two
You are across a chasm from yourself
The echoes of your voice won't reach yourself
Won't reach yourself

I am the casualty
I am the ruin.

cartwheels

This place feels like a conversation

Of words we have never spoken

I hear your breath tumbling past your teeth,

Cartwheels of sweet air

And I want to capture every piece

For the days in between,

The moments in between,

The eternity inside my head

Release a fragment of you into my nostrils

And taste your life on my tongue

The end result of a journey through your bloodstream

I am jealous of your breath

I wish to be that sacred air

which maps your veins

And follows the miles laced through your flesh.

ashes

i remember the ashes
as explosions in the street
corrosion in your veins
with your stomach's fall and raise
and i've watched you squeezing filters between your fingernails
digging deep into nicotine haze and whiskey shakes
as you breathe yourself to sleep.

some sort of recovery

it's the way your lips look
as if grasping for a cigarette
it's your crushing eyes
that bury me in symbols
hiding words that won't explain

it's your shedding skin against grey sky
as i watch the light fade
it's your fingertip touch
that rushes me to ruin
fighting back years

each breath pushes cancer into my atmosphere.

Crossword Capillaries

Your eyes burn right into me
Colorless and infinite
behind flickering irises
and crossword capillaries
I just want to feel warmth.

As spark begets flame
I am engulfed in you
Tunneled into, frozen moments
and hours of deafness
I just want to own your words.

Push back the impact
to fragments of sentences
to pinpricks of vessels
and blossoming bruises.

Your breath is scalding
Heavy, blunted
borne from weakening flesh
and pickpocket memories
I just want to taste my compulsion.

strung out recklessness

I forgot the taste of strung out recklessness
It lingers in whiskey fumes and broken bottles
I have fuzzy python visions
and shadows of fingertips
Claiming territory on my lips,
drops of heroin on my tongue.

I forgot the color of impulse exhaustion
Blinding my eyes closed,
inhaling empty bottles and fuzzy lines
To claim as my own

I forgot this curse of restrained silence
like liquid down my throat
I have fuzzy broken visions
of salted streets at night
Stained grey with chalk
while your hand traces veins
I am shaking from your touch.

anticipation

i can never anticipate
the weight of your lips on my shoulder
and i fear another touch
when i hear another breath
bringing oxygen to your blood
and blood to your brain
and your hand to my chest
and your lips to my face
and those words leave your throat
fitting neatly around mine.