What do you say to me?
you asked me on night by telephone,
when I call you you crying,
how do you calm me down?

I tell you that I love you,
I replied from atop my car hood
behind No Fun House,
and that things will get better.

You always kept that sugar
in the back of your throat,
and it fooled folks in to thinking
that you felt better than great

Four years is a decent stretch
for two friends to fail to connect
but I guess it makes good sense
that we failed the way we did

When you called me at 1am
three winters ago, I wish I would
have spent more time telling you
that I love you like I always had

When you called me at 1am
three winters ago, I wish I would
have taken just a moment to say
that things were going to be OK.

I guess I would have been a liar
but I love you still – it’s still easy to love
And I’m sorry things never got better
Even though I always said they would

you are tiny motors
driven by light

beg like the rest

make deals with
the devil

refuse
to understand
yourself
as an object
in space

never take
a best guess

at how you are perceived

by others

and i cannot decide

whether or not

to breath again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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

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.