you’ve only a vague idea of
which way we should go
and
you don’t know what it will be like
when we get there
and
i don’t think i’ll be any different
even if we do

the birds will be chirping
regardless

what does a scared little boy
know anyway?
but what he is afraid of
and when to run?

so weak that but time
and silence are all that
are required to slow your
heartbeat down to none

i never tuned the guitar i play
for your ghost the decaying tune
keeps track of the time i’ve saved
your memory and one day i won’t
recognize the song anymore
and that day i will put it back
in the case like a coffin

i say i talk to myself
but i am really talking to you
out loud it’s just another
habit i need to break
as i am breaking faster than them
i think i will stop trying

but i beg the fools not to cry
for me but to think for once about
the dead canary at the mouth of their
caves and stop making excuses and
dooming me and you and them and
us all to the same fate as me and you

like a gift from your family
not well received
but understood as a nice gesture
and now ugly and out of tune
in the closet
to be cleaned out
at the end of it all

i am joking with life
but it does not joke back
very often

when i die
i will finally know
the punchline

you should have killed me back then
when i was weak
but you let your guard down and now
that i am strong

i am moving heaven
i am moving earth
i am coming to find you

and when i greet you it will
be with a sudden movement
that will rapidly reduce
the span of your life

i don’t really say hello
these days

you throw everything in and go for it
pack it up and ship on out
and settle down and make friends
and fail
at what matters
and you sold all your shit
because you thought it’d work out differently
and now you have to start from scratch
even though the decision was
obvious

settle down and make friends
it’s not failure
at what matters

the guy at the bodega called me his friend
there’s Canadian smoke in the skies of Philadelphia again
you can feel the walls of possibility close in

don’t play with me

what once more the sun’s energy begets
the all hands meeting this morning was tense
a homeless man on my block just put up a tent

don’t play with me

lol, lmao she responds to a reel
the rich control the definition of words such as “steal”
i know exactly how long it takes for blood to congeal

don’t play with me

they couldn’t, they won’t, but they already did
then hopped in a casket with a waterproof lid
we, as a society, should have taken care of our kids

and played more with them

i know i need to do hip mobility exercises
and eat less and see the sun more

in many ways the gate is in your mind
or the pressure or the thin air is in your mind
whether you are trapped in a metal tube at the bottom of the ocean
or running through an idyllic field of lilacs and roses

we are in a multi layered simulation and the
first layer is your own mind and you aren’t
even close to escaping that one

let alone the next where maybe you could fly
but you can’t stop mouthing for the nipple
and crying

wah wah, i don’t want to do my hip
mobility exercises
i don’t want to eat less or see the sun
or call my brother and remind him that i care

because in many ways you live in your mind
and it is in a metal tube at the bottom
of the ocean, and not running through
an idyllic field of lilacs and roses

although, it is just another day on
the plane of the trickster god
you can at least try to laugh
and try to smile
and get off the nipple
and stand up

and
s
t
r
e
t
c
h
your legs until you come upon
the plane of pure thought and reason
that the tricker’s can’t even find

you won’t make it out alive
or do anything good
but your anxiety about being wrong
or, rather
your selfish desire to always be right
will drive you to feel good
about what you attempted to do

but that’s not enough

and i am writing this poem about you
but you think it’s about me
we both may be wrong
but the actual problem is that
we don’t live in the same universe

we don’t see the same reality

while i’m looking at a dirty room
all you see is a bad day
and i’m trying to find a place to start
when you’re searching for a bottle opener

and i can’t make the sun go down
but i can drive east, real fast
that’s what i’m attempting to do, man
no matter how dark it gets

you can come too

i would leave you
upon softened mound
where carnivores know
to look

in that the water from
your eyes would fall upon
a soaked earth
and prove each drop
a crocodile

as we are all frantically
searching for safety
i love you but you are
wrong

and sleep at night, though
tossed and turned
but awake the next
none-the-less

I hop up on the ledge because when I’m up here I can feel

and then harness
the potential energy.

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

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

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.

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

i’m afraid things are too grim
to believe you’re there watching
but not yet bad enough
to plead to you for help

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

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

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