you just let me so i started to eat you i was so hungry but slowly for it to last and you laid yourself down for me night after night the only other person i thought for miles that i’d see and i left your lungs so that you could breath i left your heart so that you could bleed together in a bed in which i could not sleep i was intense and disgusting and covered in fleas i got so mad at you eventually that i ate your eyes so you couldn’t see all through the night i would wail and scream and i puked up all the parts you had given to me you covered yourself in ink to hide away and last we met you revealed unto me that all along you’d saved pieces of me too and in the graveyard there was something poetic about me cumming in your mouth near decomposing bodies neath the dirt and i miss you like a heroin spoon in my dreams you still look tasty and i know you don’t feel the same you never had the stomach to keep down human flesh we were so young we just couldn’t tell that you can’t eat people like i do you can’t eat people like i do
i will not feel like a failure then
was slow on the way to the river
born with bad eyes, you know
oh
please don’t leave me behind
was last to get round the bend
to see it brown and shallow
y’all got your fill up stream
but i’m still thirsty
and when we tried to go there
together
someone always runs ahead
they run with the devil
and after 28 years
not that i was counting
i’ll step on backs to get to the head
i’ll bend glass round my eyes to see
i’ll cover my ass with animal skin
i’ll dig a hole to the fucking core
i will pass you and crush you completely
to behead the devil whom sits at the mouth
oh
i hope that i have the spirit
to crush that damn
i watch videos of people dying all the time
it is because the worrying won’t go away
that i must stretch out my standing with
long bouts of meditation
hiding, and looking away from
the beasts of currency and wealth
this failure is not a destination but a
bitter road to travel
it is a neurotic compulsion
that drives me to such barren solitude
to stop from sifting through your pedals
i, desiring
via morose curiosity
to feel disgusted by the microscopic bugs
that actually live on every flower
where there are some
slanderous
slander, definition:
inflammation
also calamity
vindication
a condemnation inspired by
my 16 year old penis
an obsession with your lungs
and whispers told at me
enrapturing or capturing me
or holding me down like gravity
i am unbecoming
i am hallucinating that you
are falling angels from the sky
and a soothsayer
perched on you
is lying about me
from you to me and
between you and i
a false light shines
not bright but loud
i shake
and shake with
anger
confused and hungry
a dog with no name
discovered 2
inspire my
pencil fingers
to trace your
crooked spine
write stories that
never resolve
that we both hate them
should be enough
lay ruin to topsoil
dig for something
underneath
that never
If Time Could Travel Backwards Part 7
All the money in your pocket
for a brand new ’79 Ford truck
with custom ordered everything
with a radio that wails
nearly as loud as the gasoline motor
burning rubber beneath a Carolina moon
You’ve been drinking a little
and so has the man to your left
but you get home safe regardless
and didn’t hurt that truck of yours
as it sits rusting in the driveway
just like it has
For decades
It’s 2017
and you haven’t seen your oldest son in 4 years
Billy
Billy lost his thirties
To hard drugs and cheap booze
And a wife that didn’t love him
He lost his money because
He couldn’t stop himself
When the crack-pipe came around
And besides, the boys on Cork street
Always treated him right
Billy lost his stride to gas station food
And he lost swagger to head trauma
He even lost his luck on pawn
And now he’ll lose his forties
To the tumor that’s growing
In the roof of his mouth
But he’ll never lose that look in his eye,
not that horrible broken one.
Not til the day he dies.
golem hält flamme
i find strange comfort in
the wind amongst the plains
of which i fight to keep
this light aflame
need find new fuel i may
for cracks have formed
which let the wind through
twixt my angry arms
what then could i use to
generate light and heat?
reach deep within my chest
at a heart that ne’er did beat?
stumble blindly toward the horizon
with eyes that ne’er could see?
gradually i become the dirt
no longer able to protect this
naive light
no longer to protect this
ignorant heat
unable to save this
stupid flame
if time could travel backwards part 6
I would knock you over
before your new soft skin
ever touched the fire
I would let you slide
when you needed to
even if I hated it
Instead of snapping back
or head-butting
I would take more hits
more stoically,
I would take your lashing
with much more grace
But later when your skin was tough
I’d let you take your scrapes head-on
without an unsolicited word,
with all the fury of a desert storm
Fury there would be
And I would hope and wish and dream
that when a cold-front came in
you would thrash beyond it’s milding
You would burn bright forever
and sometimes I would light my torch with yours
If I could make time travel backwards
and make you whole and even
I’d give you everything I could.
Everything.
Summer Cold
It’s the cough that kills me.
‘Too warm for this.’ I think
to myself out loud as the shiver
sets deep in to my bones
– just for a moment –
as the crickets chirp
just outside my window.
This old blanket serves
just as good as new
for to swaddle me up
and keep me warm in this
65-degree-Fahrenheit night
And I lay awake wheezing
and wiping clear snot
on to the back of my hand
until it’s saturated enough
to flail to find my kerchief
– an old cotton T-shirt
that I’d already worn.
The chirping seems to swell
with the unconscious chatter
of my arms and guts – and
everything, as far as I
can tell – and it would
fade again, I’m sure,
if not for this headache.
‘Ain’t it just the way?’
I yell to the uncaring crickets,
‘Sore throat in the middle
of Goddamn June!’
It’s the cough, though,
the stupid fucking cough,
that gets me every time.
fuck you, go to hell
i’m watching coachella
on youtube from kansas
wondering what God’s plan was
for all those dead middle
eastern babies
and what the fuck kendrick means
in his new album about God this
and this is what God feels like
and God chose the brown skinned
that are the true Israelites
and i can’t wait for the day that
He comes back down
oh my God i can’t wait for the day
He come back down
our male biblical salt pillar great flood
myth
i will take the full brunt of His might
like walking to a bunker in the hot, arabic
peninsula
American bombs raining down atop me
enough lava to wipe clean the soil
a plague of insects growing out of
my dead body
and i will know of hell, then
and the purgatory before it
Maggie
You are riding
on the top level
of a two-story bus
traveling late at night
somewhere
in South America
You are sick
to your stomach
at 4am and
through the wonders
of modern technology
I know
I wish that you
were cured
of whatever it is
making you feel awful
on a Tuesday morning
in Peru
I wish that you
were cured
of all the other
bad things,
too
A Thursday Night in March
I descend the steps from my front porch
into the softest of cold rains,
My only protection from the elements
a thinning button-down,
worn-out cowboy hat,
ruined pair of sneakers
– Foundry and Boot Hill and New Balance.
I am not concerned with time or
temperatures or saturation points.
The moon and stars are hidden but
I am sure that they persist.
A car speeds by every so often,
reminding of my frailties
in comparison to their metal might
Lightning whites the sky now
and now, threatening thunder
that never comes. For instants it
is as if the world is blackness
floating in a nothing more profound
than the depths of space could ever be
Two days ago the air was hardly
warm enough to breathe. Now
it whispers with impatience as it
chastises falling specks of chill wet.
If I glance past the street lamps just right,
the road looks like it’s dancing.
i reckon this is a reckoning
today there will be a reckoning and one of
us will not make it out
this is our baby, but it’s their’s as well and who are we to deny them their baby just because we love it too?
if one of must go, i selfishly hope it will be you.
perhaps your toxic attitude
was the reason for my fear
perhaps your concern was
perfectly well founded and you were only speaking truth
today more than we imagined possible will take place
change is coming
and one of us is about to be voted out.
Infinity Has No Corners
I.
On a day like today
when i am nothing
like i wished i’d be
though i am better for it
i can’t help but wonder if
it’s enough to be alive
despite life’s confusion, hurt and
hurdles
something within remains true
loyal unchanging
even when
at times
mind body get lost
addicted to a mood
hung upon
shiny alluring things
clinking chains
An abuse of the present
On a day like Today
when I feel so open
not enough space in my body to expand into
overflowing into the universe
i know
for a time
life can be fused with so much magic
it can overwhelm and silence
all those things i gave meaning to
Yet, it is the memory of those moments
that unravel me from somewhere within
as i free fall back into a vast universe
trying to make sense of a crazy experience
time after time
it becomes a struggle to remain open
to smile and feel enough
in a push-and-pull relationship
when i am never the one in control
II.
But truly,
I think the time has come
to acknowledge:
Darkness has come
it fuels my shadow
it hovers over my dreams
it clouds my judgment
inertia has sealed all openings
but decay
yet, it’s amidst darkness that
the brightest purest Light shines
near it, my fears one by one
burn and disappear
the Light beckons
my shadow resists
it holds onto me
by my flesh, desires, worries and insecurities
and drags me back into darkness
On a day like today
I know the time has come
to leap wholly into the Light
and let the old man perish
Retching
By three AM the skeletons shuffling
have left us with our ghosts
out in the chill night air
to stretch our legs, and make merry
our spirits, until we settle
at a point, and set
electric alarms to remind us
what we owe
the next short morning
It is in this space
that I think that I will find you,
writing your own lullabies
and sorting your own mail
and looking for something, too,
among these retching ghosts
and sleeping, lying corpses
I thought I found you once, but
it was just a trick of the eyes
when it works out
when things go the way i really did anticipate
and someone is helped out by the words
proceeding from my mouth rather than destroyed
by them
i feel a certain amount of pride
though the pride is misplaced
and instead there should be thankful humility
that somehow my asinine nature wasn’t able to leak out and slowly spread all over the floor filling books and crannies with that stuff that is sweet for the sole purpose of molding and attracting ants
but yet, pride is what rears its ugly head
inadequacy
i’m fairly certain…
no i definitely say it with certainty—
i’m failing at this on some scale i don’t yet understand
there are details here which i simply must be missing
and others out there who do it better than me
they understand the grind
they get the details
they are capable of sorting through all the bullshit
and what am i?
good at these other things i suppose
the wrong things?
i’m definitely fearful i can say it with certainty.
Cold Patches
I am a considerate sort,
I promise myself.
Shuffle papers quietly
ignore shouting next door
We’ve all got to be mindful
while the tough parts get sorted
I don’t want to do any sorting.
The wind blows through the old sill
near where I lay my head most nights
sometimes my nose is cold
when I wake up to use the restroom
When I come back, I just tuck deeper
in to the blanket that I keep
in spite of differences of opinion.
The rest of my home is warm, I guess,
except for 5AMs with eyes wide open
ceiling fan spinning above
a recently interrupted dream
It isn’t a very bad one
but it always makes me feel bad
anyway
it feels like forever
since i carefully sat and wrote something
out with more than a thought
or a passing care for producing
words on a page
full of ideas and “word pictures”
the kind that make me gag
because what the hell is a word picture
instead i spend most days barely scraping
by with a written word intended to last
more than a few moments after which it
will literally be consumed and erased from
the record.
press on they say
as though i’m not busy pressing on elsewhere
as though i am just overwhelmed with time
to play with my word output
bullshit i say.
