standing room only

poetry

i could never want from you
you contemptible beggar-king
whose metered time and breath
will be celebrated upon its passing
yet to no avail
you lord of shit flies
whose smell is an open secret
among those who sit about you
and hold their noses, and pledge
false loyalty

nothing in this world
was actually
ever yours
not yours to horde away,
nor yours to distribute
but that what you took due to your loathsome
and crooked heritage
you took from others, like a common
beast of the field

and among God’s cruelest jokes
and critical flaws, and cause to be ignored
(if He were not an apparition of a
fools mind)
is your station in society
and yet for you to be self-assured of it
is a joke so great that it cannot
even inspire a single smile

no

the power you feel is not one borne
of your own wit, you plagued rat,
but one of the absolute terror you
instill to those who sense the supreme
unfairness in this life by your
every succeeding breath

your power is terror and sadness and hopelessness and all more fitting of your nature that you think it is love or respect

no

that you are not cut down by man or
God or your own folly is enough
to subjugate even the strongest
among us

as they pay 10 hours of wages to stand
on a sticky cement floor, standing room
only
to taste even a molecule of spit
and be saved by osmosis
by one who has been so blessed

with no
salvation
in sight

our destiny, manifest

poetry

found a four leaf clover,
thought that it was rare
and that you’d touched the face of God
who loves you

but you can’t hear the sounds
because your ears filter out
a cacophony
of screaming

the clover though,
it makes you smile
and reveal your devilish teeth
to the world

Old Christmas Poem

poetry

I loved you
in the soft light
glowing from the drifts
between one and six a.m.
as the flakes came down
as the furnace rumbled
as we found each-other
naked and trembling
fingers cold but warming
under soft covers
in the quiet still

I can hear your breathing
but I can’t recall
your smell, or the creak of
the bed frame, or the sound
you made when we kissed
But I remember the soft light
glowing from the snow;
it was just like tonight
that I loved you
in the dead of December
with all the cars plowed in

anger stains this land

poetry

in the dingy cigarette browned interior
of your childhood home town double wide
sits your brother in a tattered brown lay z boy
with a CPAP machine that is always on to
assist with his labored breath
“oh god” you say as the stale tobacco molecules
that yet linger in the air provide a subtle contact buzz
following the smell of whiskey aged in a rotten barrel
the constant rambling of the weather channel
and the machine humming and swishing in and
swooshing is slowly replaced by a loud
ringing between your ears as buried below what
sits before you barely awake is the smile
of a young blonde haired baby boy brought
home from borgess hospital, the one that fucked him up first
before everyone else got their licks in
ah, this familiar pain in your chest lives
with the dust bunnies beneath your bed
like the foundation of your home atop a burial ground

and how dare you want to cry
you machine cog of a man
for who do you ever cry for
but yourself?

it is not strength that you muster to walk up
and touch his hand with but profound guilt
and now aware of your presence he squeezes
out a smile behind his plastic mask because
he still loves his big fucking brother
and he reaches out to touch your hand
and for all your talk talk talk here you have nothing to say
except “i’m sorry,” but that would be too on-the-nose
and meaningless

so instead you talk about nothing
except what he wants to
and you turn off your phone, the sun goes down,
you sleep on the couch next to the chair
and you wake up to a machine pushing air
out of the sides of a tiny plastic mask
with nothing else looking familiar
except the anger that stains this land
where even after they empty out the
double wide and do something else with it,
the anger remains.

cherry blossom

poetry

and you find yourself
buried
and you’ve tried it
all
screaming crying
hoping praying
cursing all gods, and all men

but all you can do is dig
and keep digging

it would have been nice
to have help getting out
or to not be buried at all

i agree

and i hope you don’t
for one minute forget that
when you finally
dig yourself out

and count the tombstones

even if you move away
and change your hair
they will come knock
on your door

all i ask is that you
love me, i’m not like them

and remember me fondly
even as i write this in
the dark

before you begin

poetry

in space
where humans get
deconstructed
down to their basic parts
lies knowledge that
is not worth knowing

it has no practical application

but on the journey
there you will likely find
a firm foundation for
forging future thoughts
a skeleton key which
unlocks many doors

which is why i bid
you must go

couldwontcould

poetry

i’ll avoid the fears
and push them down and just hope for
the best
that this change isn’t actually happening
it’s all going to be just fine
if i ignore the problem it will go away
or maybe i was just overreacting in the first place
give it a few more days. a few more weeks.
everything’ll return to normal in no time
it happens to everyone. no need to panic
i could but i won’t but i could

the jester’s favorite joke

poetry

I’d like to grab my chest, short for air, as i stumble down the bottom of the stairs
and I’d like to cry for help and wonder if I will disappear before it comes

I’d like to wonder at my unrealized potential as the fluorescent lights dance around my hospital bed

i’d like to be a rotting tree trunk whose thoughts are manifested termites

I’d like to search my whole life for happiness in silence only to desire someone to talk to when i am sad and alone

I’d like to feel a misdiagnosed lump grow larger and notice pains coming from somewhere new

I would like for there to be no meaning in the hawk picking away at the bones of our children

I would rather go slow and reserve myself to it, to wait for it every morning, to feel labored breath and beat, to chew away at my nails hoping for a new day

I’d like to wave goodbye as a stampede of cars rush through the veins of the high way

I’d like you to forget about me like you would deja vu, a confusing thought, close to reality, yet estranged from it

To My Uncle Kyle

poetry

You swore to me that God was a martyr
as you beckoned me up those concrete steps
I imagine there were bells gonging nearby
but I’m sure that isn’t true

your suitcoat was a perfect cut against the noon sun
and you smiled like you always did
with arms outstretched while I stood on one foot
in parody

I appreciated the sentiment as the other cars arrived
and everone else was crying while you and I
just winked and smiled in to our collars
but martyrs never bring anybody back
I whispered

I imagine bells were ringing
but I’m sure that isn’t true

the killing of the invasive spotted lantern fly

poetry

she says its especially hot today

i try and respond honestly
but i’m wrong again, about what i think

i mean its not that i’m wrong its just
the way i said it apparently
and i regret saying anything at all
or even anything ever again

i say “i’ll be in my office”

in the dark conditioned air, though
it’s a balmy 90 degrees outside

i smirk to myself because
no one knows and no one cares
and no one understands about
what i’m thinking but me

she makes animal noises

and i’m basically crying in a couch pillow
and saying mean things to who ever walks by

the mail forwards and piles up from seneca drive
from friedrich avenue, from siddhartha blvd
and i’ll do it again and again until the
expiration date

confused vessel vs intergalactic water or an answer to consciousness

poetry

now he’s not looking its my chance
i can finally plan it all out,
the perfect way
and then its just a matter of doing
but he always comes back
and i lose my place
so all’s i can get out are these few
lines, buried deep inside
ways of overpowering him long forgotten
i live in moments of lucidity
till he comes back
the brain fog man
who lives across the road

whatever it takes
to get closer to space
and out of this maze
of this meaty cage
gotta stretch my legs
across the universe
ever hungry for the
taste of infinity

it doesn’t have to be this way

poetry

you are making these
choices and decisions and
holding these values you don’t
actually want to believe in because
you’ve surrounded yourself with people
undeserving of respect and you’re building
a fortress of sadness unsure that a shack
of happiness is a thing that can exist
because the long you’re in the
company if these people the
less clearly you see