sometimes they go to bed hungry
or find places to hide
where no one will see them cry

every day their smiles get heavier
until they are too heavy to hold

all around me i see people who could fix it
all around me i see people who could prevent it
all around me i see weak people who
can’t even lift their own smiles, anymore

who could possibly forgive us, now?
for the mothers and fathers have gone

a sun makes god of
dust mote

dancing
in the window-
frame

and an altar
of the fly’s green husk
silent
on the sill. the same
light warms
the new leaf and the broken glass

holding both
not named

your voice

a thrown coin

like answered static
via dead channels
the low hum of
wired wall

a quiet house
of all words
homeless

the sky is a locked
brass lid

you must cartograph
slow roots

slow
secret language

of a deep spring

awaiting in dark
neath all

thirsty, asking
and begging

god used to be our favorite movie
but now it’s america
and in this movie the biggest
cock gets the girl
and everyone else
claps along or dies
i’m not the director
i don’t call the shots
i’m just an extra

do I have to tell you how movies get made?

dear bonsai tree,
watching the storm
roll in

you never wanted
to be here
anyway

drowning in
shallow water

it’s funny
isn’t it?

how nothing
is?

i crack a smile any
way

would i could
i’d hug you back
to life

or my memory of you
at least

at most
a stupid poem
actually

bonsai tree,
watching the storms
now clear

planted in
a parking
lot

a-lonely

i am alone and reading no one
which is dangerous, i know
but i’m training my mind
to see different wave lengths
(you’d be surprised at how
different everything looks)
and i don’t know it all, i know
but it’s hard to talk with whom
i know i will not be heard
and my heart is so full of hatred
that i can barely stomach
making sense of what others say
even in their big fat fancy books
wherein it is presupposed
that they’ve trained their minds
to see every different wave length
but i find more often than not
that they are lying
(you’d be surprised at how
mad they get)
so i am alone and reading no one
and not talking or being listened to
but i do not know what i will do
with what i see, once i’ve
trained my mind to see every
potential different wave length
(i will be surprised if
it is even possible)
for i am too soft to strike at the heart
for fear of the hoof
and i am too lazy to take a stand
for fear of failed expectations, and legacy
and what started out as a good idea
or the right thing to do
is now a baseless dream, and pointless exercise
and appears as a silly lonely man
reading no one and talking in circles
staring, unfocused
burdened by the knowledge of the inherent
lightness of being
writing long, rambling poems that follow no
pentameter or scheme
and the loneliness in this process
reminds me of the loneliness of death
which is preeminently uncommunicable
and unshareable
which is not what i set out for and
feels not happy, or good
or productive
and i am alone with the knowledge that i set out to find
and no one can tell or cares much its existence
alas

would it be better that they found your
decomposing corpse several miles off trail
on accident, long after the manhunt canceled
than for you to hang on to the coattails
of this massive morass of meat machines marching
to the tick of the time-clock?

have you made a big mistake
looking for yourself
rather than simply being
what is already there?

among the list of crimes
that you help commit
is making March 27th, 2025
another insanely unremarkable day
why, you’ve forgotten, that they’re
all supposed to be
very important

a day that could be perfectly heavenly
now put through your fatty system
and out the other end, like fertilizer
on a factory farm

for what you incorrectly define
as happiness

i worked on the computer all day
while she sang opera
i had 3 cats who i treated like children
i drove a 2014 toyota rav 4

i want to go back i want to go back

there was love in the house at all times
like being alone and together at the same time
we practically radiated love
as if you could see it in the air
i want to go back

i want to go back i
want to go back

even if i would get distracted
or angry about something
it was like playing pretend
because we were always safe, together

completely safe and comfortable

comfortable and how we would touch
as a family would, a deep kinship
and consistent like how a clock works
how i want to go back

i want to go back
i want to go back, i want to go back
i want to go back
i want
to go
back
i want to go back

i even knew then, that i’d want to go back
it only gets worse from here
it only got worse from there
from then on
it only got worse
and i would want to go back

i was making enough money to keep them off my back
she was doing what she loved
and we loved each other
i am certain of it
and it’s a time that can only happen once
you’ve got a narrow window to not fuck it up
and if you don’t fuck it up, anyway
it will get worse

and you will want to go back
you’ll want to go back

you’ll want to go back want to go back
want to go back
want to go
back

to subtle purrs and snoring and a clicking ceiling fan as the saturday morning sun peaks through the window
and you eat german breakfast while staring out the window as the world just flashes by you like a montage
until you look back and it becomes different, somehow
any, how

and you’re going to want to do it all over again
you’re going to wish you could go back
and do something different
be better somehow
breathe deeper somehow
chew slower
think deeper
kiss longer
somehow

you’re going to want to go back
and that’s the one thing you cannot do

i am eating shit and
drinking piss
at the encore hotel and casino
and i hear someone
screaming, in the distance
but i don’t care and
i won’t go looking for them

because i’m a lazy killer
it could take me a lifetime
and blame lies with the beholder

sounds of bugs and birds chirping
as the sounds of plants growing

look for food until
you get tired
look for sleep until
you fall into it

thoughts chattering in the meantime

whether your imagination lives in the ancient language of metaphor
or not

whether superpositioned wormholes allow for space travel
or not

it does not matter

there is nothing
for you
to do

torn out to sea
on a lazy sunday
didn’t heed the warning
a fine swimmer, or not
he couldn’t fight the ocean
alone

Everywhere you are
Is paradise

Every breath you take
We take together

Every dream with you in it
Is a wish

Every moment with you
Is forever

I will be here with you
As long as I am alive

And always I will keep you
In my heart and in my mind

Every day a wish fulfilled

i thank sc johnson
for the clean smelling shirt
as i fly over the yellow sea
with munitions to erase
the human mind
and lucky me that
my prayers kept the cancer
(colon, esophageal, pancreatic, et al)
at bay, long enough
and at least for these few more hours
to reflect on where
romance lives, far away
probably, with the pain
that started all of this

name it and give it rules
so that in the future you can replicate
something similar, but not the same
a soulless and shallow masked figure
with just you underneath
you

you you you

reify, hyperbolize, generalize
trick your god into believing
that you love him
so you can make it a part of
you

you you you

i am driven by something foreign
like an alien-human body
stumbling around target

i am driven by a 2.5 litre 4-cylinder
engine made by toyota across
a bridge built in the early 1960s

where it smells like death
when the air gets stale
next to the garbage plant
of course it does

of course it does
dead dinosaur bones pile up
by the side of the road
and no one picks them up

when I was younger
and a wild oat
roaming freely
I could sit on air
and watch the sunset
without sorrow
and spend all day staring
out a window taken
from wood not far from here
as a lowly bug biting with
compassion and not trading
stocks in silence or attention

bounce back
piss on my pants
cherry hill new jersey
amc
where desperate birds chirp
at night
conflicting visions not unto me
we all seem to know that
every sad thing is happening
all the time
irrespective

if i knew
what shallow pools i swam
what otherwise,
a sunny day i
would forever love
yet after god had
banished me
for months without rain
i find myself dying,
here

and shallow still
are their eyes
as i lie gasping for air,
even
they are uneasy to stay
because the school moves on

it is hard for those
who are fleeting
and flittering away
wasting away
and not resting, at all
not resting even a bit
to not see the last
moments as the longest

and their closests friends
more greatly scared to share them
than their love extends
because the school
moves on

the cat birds have moved on without me
of course
now replaced by the house finch

i’d hoped to be here waiting
alive still, with the oak tree
whatever shape we were both in

but i sense the inevitable
snapping back of the rubber band of time
closer, now

can i make peace with them going on
without me?
if for no other reason than
to make myself feel better

as is all that man, and cat birds, and house finches,
and all we can all ever do

riding the back of some big thing
smiling
scared
excited
crying

the underbelly of the crushing
machine is a beautiful red
from the blood of its enemies
as the miasmic soup of reasons
that people stand in the way
are mixed together with the cacophony
of screams just like their bones and
blood and reasons are mixed together
creating the beautiful red

oh brother, brother
aurora borealis
ouroboros