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

how can I thank you enough
for what you have given to me
what was taken from others
which is what I would have done
if I were in your shoes
or at least that’s what you
tell your children which
I suppose I may never know
the truth

the impossible truth
hidden somewhere in an ever-growing
book of lies which i am to
read with my own eyes and discern
with my own mind and you
coincidentally gave those
both to me and taught me
how to use them

but i think
maybe i should not have accepted your gifts
and maybe you lied to me
and maybe i don’t need stolen things
and maybe the truth doesn’t have to be hidden inside a lie
and maybe you taught me how to use my eyes and mind wrong
and maybe i should not thank you
at all

maybe there is a better way

i hope they’ll say “his prose
was better than any of you fuckers
dared to appreciate in his lifetime
so do your part in his death”
and then stare with a straight face at
the audience who came to mourn
and giggle on the inside as one
last
terrible
inside joke that wasn’t really funny

they fed them to the wolves in uvalde
for a sum of cash
and they’ll do it over and over
because we all want a taste of that
sweet, sugary American pie
with the ants all crawling all over the pan
jealous of our glucose response
and we’ll all be dead by sunrise
the workers, the children, and queen

one more cop one more gun
the children are free to run
if they want to or
if they can

i never got your bonzai
in the mail or otherwise
but i’m gonna put you on paper
in great detail, too
just how you were before
you were taken quickly
instead of draining away slowly
like the rest of the group

when I am close to dying I will
very suddenly regret everything
i had done that did not lengthen my lifespan
even though i have made peace today
with the decisions that will likely
put me in such a situation because
i am the same person who is two people
disrespecting each other up until
the very end

and i am still thinking of ways to make
my limited time here feel worth while
that fit within the organizational
structure within my brain that i call
my self

if i am going to play make believe in
some way, let it be that i am already
dead and drinking a rockstar punch
from beyond the grave and savoring it
truly

yet to consume is the easy thing to
rationalize but it is what i would want
to leave behind that i find harder
to stomach because i know that in my heart
the human being is functionally a type
of psychopathic parasite who loves
to trod all over the grass until it is dirt
and smile to himself and drink rockstar punch
and write stupid poems that even he would
not read

ah, to sigh and be happy is godly
but what is it to build a sand castle
in reverence to proxima centauri b?
what is it to have access to all 1,000 premium
cable television stations and to “astral
project” and observe the writhing mass
of lowly bugs and telepathically hear every
tiny bug thought?

and let us image, if you will
after all
that you are trapped behind a
calcified carbon cage bouncing
inside a water balloon
you’d want to make the best
and float freely through space
and have it not pop

overtaking me a dream for sleep
so strong where we hold hands
on a hazy summer day never
to come again i imagine
static shock crackling as
i touch your soft pale skin
that is really the sound
of the blazing forest blending
into hallucination

exhausted i rest on frozen snow
and behind me the forest is burning
i flee exactly as all animals do
but with energy leaving me as
blood, flowing down my torso
a wound that will would overcome
if i had it

i was not the one to save us
after all

don’t drown
don’t drown
don’t drown
the waves are higher and you’re fatigued
beyond a reasonable limit. time to stand
still and stay afloat and relax your arms
and never give up but stop the fight
don’t drown
don’t drown
don’t drown

the crowd goes mute by a push of the button
and i sit in the shadows of the city
they say a man had flew without wings
and i don’t believe them
in the days after we ripped a man
from the cross that the roman’s had killed
time goes slower if you pay attention
so i don’t blame them for wanting

obsessively staring into
the abyss that does not
stare back into me
as i am eaten alive
by everything else but
the abyss not acting at all

accidentally muted guitar strings
and
thoughts outside my head
the
song i know you won’t like
i’m
finally brave enough to play
but
it doesn’t sound that great
anyway

you’re wrong if you think i won’t do
whatever i need to do
because actually i have no love for you
i swear if i feel the need to peel the steel
i’d point it at you
what i’m saying is i’m eating
one way or the other
no matter family mother sister brother
this is neither bet nor threat
but a reminder to myself and others
i have never nor will ever stay down

the executioner is invisible
the day’s pay is randomized
the language is contradictory
the school is full of parasites
then the people choose to pray to
whomever success correlates
and if nothing within the realm
of reason reveals itself then
the next best thing is chosen
or else suffering would be realized
and the best system never realizes
it’s suffering
thanks dad

what one person is to many
many are to the dream
which
we must keep alive at all cost

even if your family hates you
and you walk across the tundra
and the sound of the permafrost
cracking mixes with the sound
of your brittle bones cracking
and the radiating karma melts
your skin as it falls off your
body all so that the tiny sputtering
flickering flame you hold in
your hands does not go out

the very idea of such fills
you with anxiety and sadness too
profound for you to speak about
as a thought too scary for you
to even acknowledge as it dances
across the inside of your brain

that the dream which you would not
wake yourself to leave may have
been a bad thing all along and
therefore the many may have been
needlessly cast aside and even
the one,
oh the one,
you that is,
the one even down to the way you
opened your door and said hi
to your neighbor could have actually
been the all important thing

and damn the flame and damn the carrying
of it over the mountains and through
the woods and across the tundra
and then burping up in the consolatory
idea that you’d known you would think
this when the light begins to dim

because what is there to do but question
what you had done before when the
outcome is so grim but your heart knows
that the bargain you made with yourself
the devil,
that is,
inside of yourself
was a forfeit and bad one and now you are
here at the edge of the earth looking
a zombified mess holding this little
pathetic idea in your head with a new kind of
sadness

a new kind of cry
a new kind of tear
drips down your cheek
and extinguishes the flame

you hear a new voice inside you
whisper so gently that
after all this time, you’ve finally made it
but every cell inside of you is painfully aware of
a secret truth which underpinned everything
and that you always knew and now know even more

that it is too late

there’s a doctor
in your town
who kills all the animals
that no one wants

and there’s an oven
in your town
where they pile the dead
dogs atop one another
and burn them

and that’s okay with you

it’s not just the city
you were born in but
one which you choose to stay
and you lie all the time
about whether or not you can leave
and many more things

and actually it’s more than
just okay with you because
there’s a headstone up on a hill there
and you fucking paid for it

and i’ll forget
about you just like
you forgot about
the dogs you had put down
because i will never forget
about that

a poem that i never wrote

i won’t ever get done unpacking
settle down and let you in

chemicals that made me choke

and i’ve been forging my own signature,
too
calling myself by different names

umbilical wrapped round my throat

but i am not even a hobo or
hopping trains i just walk in circles
and sleep on the floor and
i can’t even bare the thought

a half baked thought,
in a mangey coat

of having pride in a home
so you can’t possibly love me

words you hoped i’d never write
actions that control your life

because there’s no one to love

dear mother

you do desire to be read
like a book you do
as you are what man
is, romantic fool
or a minute volitante

would you could you
sift through my waste
in order to sanely pick
a speck of me worth keeping
and prove that i am real
even if hard to see

shake my jaws apart
mirror-face
and lay wasted
in a hole
on a sunday
only i can fly
in my dreams

lost as a man but not an object
or lost as an object but not a man
or not quite lost at all yet
a beacon to be pointed to

unlike the tiny eye floater