and thats how you found yourself
awake at 5:30 in the morning
freezing to a shake in your shoes
wondering if you have what it takes
to find joy in the sleep deprivation
and the strenuous endlessness of the
road ahead as you ignore red lights
and head for the hills hoping to
return before the sunrise.

They’ll drag you, too,
behind the backs of cars
right down the main drag
hooting and hollering
and as your skin scrapes
from your body and on to
the asphalted ground with
your screams buried behind
the 8-cylinder roaring, you’ll
bleed out over miles while
the ropes around your wrists
near pull your hands right off

At those speeds
nobody here
can save you

he came to our party drunk already
he grabbed a guitar and joined our songs
singing blues and bashing chords

reality came knocking
the police
the landlord

he answered the door like a madman
screaming “i’ll kill who
ever it is!”

a struggle ensued
he screamed “wetback!
spic!”

at the mexican landlord
and
it was a drunk struggle

until the cops came and
we all ended up on the
street but the cops never saw the knife

well,
he’d pulled it on the landlord
before his girl got him to the car

he was still screaming
“i’ll kill you!
let go of me! you bitch!”

we decided, via telephone
to avoid the cops, we’d party
onward at another domicile

i believe, this was our first night
together (you and i),
and when we got there he was still mad

he shattered the glass door
of the apartment complex with
his knife

he ran off into the woods
after changing clothes in his
girl’s car

i told you how much i admired him
and you were so afraid when the cops
came to the second place, too

and here you are getting engaged
about to fuck for the first time
because you’re getting married

at 22
what a joke;
i still wish i was him that night

I long in private
to know humility.
Something you suffered in full
at the moment of your birth.

Choosing us at the cost of
stepping from paradise to our
filthy rags. Our filthy skin.
Our filthy thoughts, ways, and
friends. Settling for deny-ers,
liars, and betrayers

he’s clothed in grey and hangs
with death until death waves his
scythe in disgust trying to wave
away the scent he carries.

like a Pig-Pen floating in the sky
the dirt moves around with him
carrying a scent he loves to
bring to children and men of all ages.

he had a brief visit with my mother
who claimed he smelled of perfume
when with her. a lie i believed until
i was much too old.

on dates in high school he’d visit and
torment me to hassle me through the
evening laughing in mockery as i consumed
linguine with my date. till the moment
i dropped her off at night, loosened my pants
and sighed a sigh of relief as he
finally
slowly
left me
sputtering
out
screaming. “see you tomorrow!”

And Death, he is a beautiful bastard,
A Home-coming Angel and a Devil
with snatching claws. Master of kings
and countrymen and not a soul
can stand against him. With his
sword he deals in truth alone, and
his terrible visage is as a nightmare
and a burden and a final flash of
freedom so that the young will flee
and the suffering will beg for him to come.
He wanders every street and field,
his blade in hand, and while I haven’t
been around the last time I saw him
he was looking pretty down on his luck
with his black robe all in tatters so
I guess his gig doesn’t pay so well and
maybe he should try to get one of those
cushy Government jobs instead.

an injury induced break
brought to mind the difficulty
of finding endorphines (or something like them)
legally in this day in age.

today we took flight for an hour
to see what our bodies could
still do.

roads to grass to steps to history
to hills past zoos and along rivers
we weaved through crowds and
jumped over folk just to
watch them squirm with fear
and something like joy.

flight for an hour and we returned
home because the time was too
short for a two hour flight when
family is at home counting on you
doing something other than soaking
in endorphines.

the rabbit ear is bent
or there is snow in the dish
or the line is cut
and sure, I see smoke, but
I can’t read the signals,
and even though the mail
always gets through,
it’s tough in this weather.

O, that all the pigeons
are dead. O, that they
were not mailbirds instead.

his book, by now
was far too long to be read
in full

no plot was evident
he just kept writing

his hurried fingers
whirring inside of
his pathetic house

tim

There was a story told
about a man who’s hands
turned lead to gold
and what an awful burden it could be

Because, really, you could
never touch anything again.
The guitar does not sound
so sweet so gilded, nor
do trumpets,
nor do saxophones.

How does one eat? Or
sleep on such stiff pillows?
The paper in a photo-album
erased, worth a thousand
dollars to a thousand words.

Someone told me the story
but I can’t remember what it
means. I think, though, that
I’ll keep wishing for heat-vision.
After all, what harm could
that do?

i watch the moon
eclipse–
you sleep somewhere beneath.

bluffage brought roughage
to the cliff ridge

we held hands
and jumped

my words melt you like laser beams.
my rhymes nuke you like nuclear bombs.
my metre rocks you like a boat in waves.
this poem torments you like something
else that torments you.

today i felt myself slowly melt
as i drank a tea worth throwing
and not drinking then threw it
but poorly and nearly broke through
metal as my cake of horror shattered
in pieces and rained down on the
neighbors below red staining
glorious tea.

oh and i worked myself into a hole
yesterday with eight solid hours of nothing
but clicking and copying and pasting
my life into an oblivion (aka 239 footnotes).

but then on inspiration from a book
the library definitely should have had
i sprinted home and mined google books
for sections to quote to fill in the void
and in a burst of brilliance completed
the journey my soul has singularly
(not so much)
pursued for the last six months.

tonight i shall sip wine (for scotch is
celebratory but I lack any in the house at
the moment) and dream grand dreams
of someday graduating from this misery
of a hole i’ve dug myself by enrolling in
higher education. again. and then a third
time. as though i like to poke myself in
the eye with needles.

all of it hoping. praying. someday people
will sit in rows and look to me as authoritative
not because they want to or actually believe it

but because they’re told to.

I was walking down a country lane
to get my guitar tuned again
when I got knocked off my feet by a passing truck

When I hit the ground my guitar neck snapped
So I stood up and figured that was that,
Some other pickers just have all the luck

He was
a melancholic wave
handsome
in a silver-green night
his fingers pressed joy upon
lips and expiring pineapple cans,
imprinting eternity and warmth.
Street lights, shadow worries
and steaming breathes twisted threads
of his existence
only the wind hurled a “hello, I want to hug your bones”

despite the loaded bases,
i’ll throw one more,
checking the first
and the second,
finally the third,
hoping to close it out
and get the save,
but this is the end,
no matter what happens,
and in that freedom,
i’ll wind myself up,
hoping to not let you down.

when the speare no longer needs a shield
i plan to step in and oh how i’ll wield
a pen of greatest portions
denying the smallest doubting notions

I can see the blood
and I know you think
that you’re dying,
and the stagger
that you’ve made
so obvious
through the snow-bank
shows me all the pain
you’re in, but
swear though I’m sure
you must,
I don’t think she ever
cuts to kill.