Taxes

poetry

it likes you
and it’s breathing
it can smell you on his
breath and now
it hungers
yes, it wants to feed
on you
oh, god, it’s
breathing

and you’re running
but escape is not an
option when it likes you
like it does
and it can smell you
on his breath and
it is hungry

like every monster
always is

dang this consciousness

poetry

i dream someday
due to lack of recognition
(in my own lifetime)
my poems will be dug up
perhaps by some digital
archaeologist
finding pages ruffled
and singed from burning
stanzas lost through the years

perhaps like emily
they will find
my poetry worth only
a glance
to be moved on,
forgotten

and while i’ll never be
recognized for great words
for one small moment
perhaps

they’ll know i knew just
how poorly i wrote
and forever remember me
as awkwardly
painfully
self-aware

stick man

poetry

your the stick man and
they made a pencil outta you
woah your friends are all left
and your tryin’ to keep it right
they got a number for you
and you know it’s no. 2
you see the blue lines in the sky
nothin’ quite fits inside of them
you celebrate your loneliness with
nights by the sharpener
woah and you’ve got nothin’
nothin’ to write down.

disgusting things

poetry

pop up in the strangest places,
like on my key ring
in the form of a rewards card
with lamination receding
from every corner,
opening the way
for putrid, green filth
to work towards the center;
and it might be mold,
or it might be green ear wax;
it really looks like boogers,
and kind of like rancid baby poop,
and it’s just disgusting.

and all the while,
that has been in my oblivious pocket.

reflections in metre.

poetry

in hills like these
we wait for sun
to semi-peak through clouds

knowing now
these lost people
dwell in mud-built homes

we come and play
where they work
joy fills us in their fields

the sweat on their brow
the same as ours
though brought through toil not cheer

today i came
i saw i conquered
and left you here to farm

i hope someday
that i’ll be back
and bring you love you cant ignore

Halls of dirt

poetry

I stand inside your
halls of dirt and wonder
at the processes which
bring me here

All the cash is gone
three states away and
yet, here I stand, among
hollowed pockets in these
unhallowed halls of dirt

the stench is thick but
I cover my face with
a fresh, clean T-shirt
(poly-cotton blend)
as I stand in your lines
and I count the ways
that every fucking dime
I leave with you could
drop so easily in a Coinstar
machine, or slide quite
neatly in to my piggy bank

But no,
you’ll take care
of the banking
for me

Here in your halls of
dirt, I stand and wonder,
but I smile. After unfolding
bills and signing paper
I will go back to my shitty car
and drive it to a basement show
and then I’ll play some guitar
and you know, you can’t
charge me in guitars. The rest
is only money. Dig deep
the pit you put it in,
here in your halls of dirt

how to build the worst place in the world

poetry

1. hide the sun. put it under the bed, or in that vent in the back of your closest. just hide it. hide that sun better than you hide your porn. and keep it gone so long people forget its color forget its job forget that we orbit the fucking thing.

2. throw a big sheet of depressing gloom over the sky. should be the color of communist-era cement. the uniformity of the mind-numbing texture should be vast and soul-crushing.

3. let it rain. seriously. rain. go ahead and reroute the oceans to pour directly from the sky because that’s how much rain you need and how long you’ll need to let it fall. get those fuckers wet. make sure it soaks through their shoes socks skin so their fucking bones turn to yogurt. let it rain so much their weather stations start reporting the percent chance of sun and make them take their sopping umbrellas everywhere even the bus so when other fuckers sit down their asses get wet as well. standing puddles should be so deep passing cars kick up tidal waves.

4. turn down the temperature. turn it way down. go ahead and bring the atmospheric molecules to a near fucking standstill. it should be so cold skin dries cracks bleeds without provocation.

5. get the wind going. let street signs trees and people stand at seventy degree angles. make it so windy windows shake nearly shattering. do that annoying shit where you make their umbrellas snap inside out before sailing away.

6. call it boston.

Two for 5

poetry

And betwixt the produce aisle
Wherein I came thereupon
A luscious, even radiant fruit
Of tempting proportions
That Eve herself could not resist.
Though don’t devour in underworlds
As four seeds shall be fourever too many
Nor in the presence of serpents
But take your time, immerse instead
And slice by seven, just because?
Trash the rest, consuming only the seeds.
Not auriferous but still delicious!

i loved growing up in colorado. it’s probably about the best place on earth to live ever. in fact i hope heaven is like colorado because there is little to no hope i will return to such beauty in the life (despite what i’m sure will be my best efforts). why, you might ask do i love it so? i can give reasons all day long. but at the end of the day it comes down to 2 things. beauty. epic winters. mmmm….. epic winters.

poetry

winter makes life hard sometimes
the temperature drops daily
as coal dust falls silting the ground
in grey
black.
and drops and drops
reminding you there are forces bigger
than your work day
and drops and drops
you pile on more clothes and fight
smaller colds
and drops

till every man made blemish
is covered in virgin white
every sin forgotten

in snow.

i, too, pass emotive gasses from my buttox america

poetry

I am the shackle-free brother
they send me to flatulate in the washroom
when friends visit
but i laugh
losen my belt
and relax.

tomorrow
i’ll be in the dining room
when friends visit
nobody’ll dare
ask me to
“cut the cheese in privacy”
then.

besides
they’ll see how comfortable i am
and be humiliated

i, too, am america.

i remember being 12,

poetry

and i was enamored,
much like when i later got hammered,
and my mind was filled
with thoughts that thrilled
every part of me
as i watched the tv,
and i wanted so much to compete;
and I wanted so much to complete
ly leave behind the stocky boy I used to be
finding the athletic god ahead of me.

so i decided to go get myself a snack,
thinking that tomorrow i would hit the wrack.