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.