the sieve and the sand

what a futile world,

man constructs for himself

staring intensely into

the garden

all to dissolve

and leave behind

not much else

than he came

with.

i cannot stop the ants
that crawl on my desk
through the day night
i know of their general
origin but cannot find
their home
if they have one
if they’re real
maybe they’ve followed me
for like eight years
maybe they’re inside of me
and more of a part now than
ever and are now running
across my eyelids
as a real physical metaphor
a real hallucination
the real power of the mind
in the dark
crawling around your throat
telling me to leave you,
while you sleep
because i’ve always been
the lonely type.

the bed holds you
like it did your grandfather
it helped take his leg, too
because you sleep with your enemies
so i now lie awake staring
worriedly at my leg
surrounded by my vices
who want to eat me alive
i must move or do
something.

my anger feeds off of your happiness
errant emotions you force into the moment
stupid unfinished lovesongs written to strangers
to every stranger you see, every day
whose frequency is innumerable
to which you profess, each is as important
nay i see entropy with each guffaw
i see desperation in the face of mediocrity
i see another dopamine junky
a sociopathic one, at that
licking the floor for happiness
in the form of laughter.

let the loneliness penetrate
i deserve it for the
mocking of the birds
which were chirping
i was
annoyed
damn me to loneliness
i deserve it for what
i said,
for the moments trapped
in selfishness
for the moments
which i strangle
the air
let the loneliness get me
like the cold
it’s what
ever.

i was here for
8 hours for every
24 it took the sun
to go over my head
and come back again
and now we’re
closing up shop

the floors are cleaned
and silence pervades
this beast that time
gave a name

the pawn shop,
where you learn the absolutes
how to avoid them
and to spend your time
swimming in hyperbole

unchecked commerce
on the edge of the west
the dying fashion of
negotiation

and we’re closing up shop
and once the doors lock
a stranger to this womb
i will be,
but all the better for it.

even defacating is lonely
without your cell-o-phone friends
in the place where your
bad dreams wander into daylight
in the place where they pay you
to sift below the lazy pyramid
it’s okay, it’s your day off
drop acid.

water not the weeds
that grow down your spine
and have the determination
to cull them eternally
for i remember when i noticed them
at least five years ago

i said aloud to my friends:
“why these weeds on my
straight and narrow spine
they have to go!”

a young man still, feeling
very old at heart i sit
crooked, wavering
trying not to feed the weeds

do not prevent them,
the weeds
do not loathe them and
bring them rain
just do not feed them
and cut them down when you can

and never tell of them
your friends

the weeds that will grow
on your spine
inevitably.

no altruism i felt at then
your eyes drifted t’ward me
like some ghostly wet dream

a modern temptress sent by
fate in an aged rotting package,
another hannah

i kept my mouth shut
like how i keep my pen
when love stops reading

the half-baked moon whispered
to me secrets i already knew
and i’m sick, sick with feeling.

there’s nothing worse than
losing the event you’re good at
outright

and watching the grinning faces
of those whom you considered
contemporaries

it doesn’t quite matter the
arena or the time or
conditions

there’s nothing worse than
losing your reason for
waking

unless, of course, you include
losing it twice, or three times
onwards.

nature is a prudish lover
and will not give secrets first
you must learn to win
them honestly
or not at all,
i’m afraid

for without you may
well kiss the wind
but the wind
will not
kiss you,
back.

as the snow comes back a
subconcious picture of you
burnt in the screen
a microscopic mostly-
see-through-bug on my
eyeball
wriggles around all day
and my friends never liked you
except the ones who loved you

i wonder what you’re doing now
loving someone else like i am?
or wriggling around

or falling to the ground

as the snow that comes back
to michigan.

i could not drink the monster’s cup
but i could stand amidst his fury
i would not claim to be a hero
i just like to prove that i won’t fold
the monster lashed out at his daughter
and i thought i’d rather die
than see honesty destroyed over
drunken sunset tired ineffable anger from
her father the big white monster drinking
vodka from a cup
he called it eggnog
i called it vodka milk and icecubes
he looked at me and then he smirked
he should have rapped me once at least
one real fucking good one on my thinker
for i am 5’9 and have the fight of a
newborn baby bird flapping violently
plunging t’wards the parking
lot.

the greats are chosen by lottery
among a group of statistically
identical beings
and the draw is about time
and place and circumstance
and the baselessness is harolded
around far and wide as a great
intellectual romance
between society and fate
a ritual bathed in carbon
a steeple of inhumanity
a legal type of thievery
of opportunity for a pure soul
whom has no value
anymore.

being quiet all the time
does not make you more profound
by necessity
and the very fact
that you find yourself so
important that you
won’t speak shows
that you are not at all,

so all your silences are just
boring and awkward to me
even if i make an ass of myself
telling you so.

i wasn’t ready for hannah or
how at our winter formal she
toyed with me next to my date

i exploded with ambition but
she saw the smoke from miles away

oh
how easy it must have been
to take me out and shut me down
but the real miracle was that
the last time i called her she
scolded me with a thousand insights
on what i could do better
like we’d been together for years
and i told her that hearing
all my flaws from her in such detail
after only knowing her shortly
turned me on
and she hung up

and i guess i never would be
ready for hannah
for now she’s married and hiking in utah
and i’m just single and sitting in nowhere
ready now but never to.

he always liked the sex better
when she would tell him how
big his cock was

made him really feel like he
had something

she would chase those words
with cigarette smoke
take the cash and find the
nearest bathroom

it was like shitting or eating

and sometimes on the walks
home she would think about
how great love seemed in books
and often times she would
break down and cry because
no one would love her
not a hooker

she would never have the
perception to understand that
the millions of people whose
weight felt heavy
on top of her
all of that of society
were just like her, mostly

and just like her trick
they all just want to have
something

so putting her down makes
them feel important

but without that truth her
tears fell all silent
and sad, and the trick
went on to manage a business
with his huge cock, of course.

it’s true i can never be fully conscious
like a decorated theorist gone mad
i am brilliant only in brief moments
maybe at 1:29 over lunch i will extrapolate
but then by 3 again i am inane
forgetting my daughter’s name
laughing to myself.

i can’t help but wonder
when i see your smile and
feel your self-worth oozing
through your fabrics
and hear you on the pulpit
biting the heads off the
daisies with such dreadful
and precise repitition:

if this were gaza,
would you be dead?

and if it were

and you were alive

would you drive that

Ford Excursion?

would you import it
on your peasant’s wage
and walk around shaming
everyone for not
saving as you had?

would you be so loud
with a mouth full of sand
or blood?