i’m watching coachella
on youtube from kansas
wondering what God’s plan was
for all those dead middle
eastern babies
and what the fuck kendrick means
in his new album about God this
and this is what God feels like
and God chose the brown skinned
that are the true Israelites
and i can’t wait for the day that
He comes back down
oh my God i can’t wait for the day
He come back down
our male biblical salt pillar great flood
myth
i will take the full brunt of His might
like walking to a bunker in the hot, arabic
peninsula
American bombs raining down atop me
enough lava to wipe clean the soil
a plague of insects growing out of
my dead body
and i will know of hell, then
and the purgatory before it

You are riding
on the top level
of a two-story bus
traveling late at night
somewhere
in South America

You are sick
to your stomach
at 4am and
through the wonders
of modern technology
I know

I wish that you
were cured
of whatever it is
making you feel awful
on a Tuesday morning
in Peru

I wish that you
were cured
of all the other
bad things,
too

I descend the steps from my front porch
into the softest of cold rains,
My only protection from the elements
a thinning button-down,
worn-out cowboy hat,
ruined pair of sneakers
– Foundry and Boot Hill and New Balance.

I am not concerned with time or
temperatures or saturation points.
The moon and stars are hidden but
I am sure that they persist.
A car speeds by every so often,
reminding of my frailties
in comparison to their metal might

Lightning whites the sky now
and now, threatening thunder
that never comes. For instants it
is as if the world is blackness
floating in a nothing more profound
than the depths of space could ever be

Two days ago the air was hardly
warm enough to breathe. Now
it whispers with impatience as it
chastises falling specks of chill wet.
If I glance past the street lamps just right,
the road looks like it’s dancing.

today there will be a reckoning and one of
us will not make it out

this is our baby, but it’s their’s as well and who are we to deny them their baby just because we love it too?

if one of must go, i selfishly hope it will be you.
perhaps your toxic attitude
was the reason for my fear
perhaps your concern was
perfectly well founded and you were only speaking truth

today more than we imagined possible will take place
change is coming

and one of us is about to be voted out.

I.

On a day like today

when i am nothing

like i wished i’d be

though i am better for it 

i can’t help but wonder if

it’s enough to be alive

despite life’s confusion, hurt and

hurdles

something within remains true

loyal unchanging

even when

at times

mind body get lost

addicted to a mood

hung upon

shiny alluring things  

clinking chains 

An abuse of the present

On a day like Today

when I feel so open

not enough space in my body to expand into

overflowing into the universe

i know

for a time

life can be fused with so much magic

it can overwhelm and silence 

all those things i gave meaning to

Yet, it is the memory of those moments

that unravel me from somewhere within

as i free fall back into a vast universe

trying to make sense of a crazy experience

time after time

it becomes a struggle to remain open

to smile and feel enough

in a push-and-pull relationship 

when i am never the one in control

II.

But truly,

I think the time has come

to acknowledge:

Darkness has come

it fuels my shadow

it hovers over my dreams

it clouds my judgment 

inertia has sealed all openings

but decay 

yet, it’s amidst darkness that

the brightest purest Light shines

near it, my fears one by one

burn and disappear 

the Light beckons

my shadow resists

it holds onto me 

by my flesh, desires, worries and insecurities 

and drags me back into darkness

On a day like today

I know the time has come

to leap wholly into the Light

and let the old man perish

By three AM the skeletons shuffling
have left us with our ghosts
out in the chill night air
to stretch our legs, and make merry
our spirits, until we settle
at a point, and set
electric alarms to remind us
what we owe
the next short morning

It is in this space
that I think that I will find you,
writing your own lullabies
and sorting your own mail
and looking for something, too,
among these retching ghosts
and sleeping, lying corpses

I thought I found you once, but
it was just a trick of the eyes

when things go the way i really did anticipate
and someone is helped out by the words
proceeding from my mouth rather than destroyed
by them

i feel a certain amount of pride
though the pride is misplaced
and instead there should be thankful humility

that somehow my asinine nature wasn’t able to leak out and slowly spread all over the floor filling books and crannies with that stuff that is sweet for the sole purpose of molding and attracting ants

but yet, pride is what rears its ugly head

i’m fairly certain…
no i definitely say it with certainty—

i’m failing at this on some scale i don’t yet understand

there are details here which i simply must be missing
and others out there who do it better than me

they understand the grind
they get the details
they are capable of sorting through all the bullshit
and what am i?

good at these other things i suppose
the wrong things?

i’m definitely fearful i can say it with certainty.

since i carefully sat and wrote something
out with more than a thought
or a passing care for producing
words on a page
full of ideas and “word pictures”
the kind that make me gag
because what the hell is a word picture

instead i spend most days barely scraping
by with a written word intended to last
more than a few moments after which it
will literally be consumed and erased from
the record.

press on they say
as though i’m not busy pressing on elsewhere
as though i am just overwhelmed with time
to play with my word output

bullshit i say.

warmth from the winter sun hitting fifty eight degrees
in this dry land where the warmth is exacerbated by the lack of humidity
and our chairs don’t fold up
our feelings don’t dry when
they’re exposed to the sun even if we wish they would,
instead they’re like my shorts on a long run, long long after my shirt is soaked with sweat
and the moisture leaks in to my pants and causes outrageous chaffage in the midst of the simmerish-winter weather.
never a problem in the warm
when my nipples don’t chafe in the cold-sweat of my wool wrapped body

it’s not summer and dammit, it’s time I let you know by screaming of my frustrations to you

you can’t love
a fuck-stick
you love fucking
not the stick
like getting high

it is difficult
to love
a non-fuck-stick-human
their value
is more complex

as complicated as you are
and reliant
symbiotic
it’s a different game
in that it’s not a game

or not at least supposed to be
yet is one, to but laughter
at an unshared thought
such as yourself
bouncing off cement walls

you can’t love but the
sound of your own breath
or feel of chemicals
oozing through your
narrow veins

not corporeal but a laugh
entropic and singular
molesting the
air in
desperation

i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know
if the words to the songs wear away
if the thoughts escape and never come back
if the feelings are trains off their tracks
if it might be better
to strip off my clothes
and run naked through the streets
making a mess, not pretending
that i don’t want to make the mess
anymore
i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know
if i can build a clock
big enough
to make the seconds matter
i know they did in the past
but i still don’t give a shit now
i look into your eyes and cry
if only i knew how you felt about me
if only the whirlwind of words in every
dictionary were writing a story that i
could fucking understand
i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know
if that means that i’m failing
or winning
or if i care either way
or if i love life
or if i hate life
or if i love you
or if i hate you
i don’t know
i don’t know
i don’t know

what i do know?
is that just because you threw it away
does not mean it ceases to exist

how the hell
do I reconcile the foolishness of my day to day
with the reality of the world?

how do I fight for what I care about
when the world just laughs, cries.
ignores me

when everything else seems hopeless
at least I’m pushing forward
pressing on
and chasing hard after other cliches
I desperately hope are cliches for good reason

i’m sure you’d hate me
like i hate me mrs.
brodhead
because you were always
better than me
and i was a step behind
and probably am
and all i can think
the moment i almost
touched you
among the dead
and the dying
grass of the cemetary
where i came
so close to being
better, like you
are
in radiance
mrs. brodhead
when you used to
have a different name
fresh like the fallen
snow

i’m sure you’d hate
me for my shitty
tendancies and give
more than just a nod
as i do —
mrs. brodhead
doesn’t think of that
trudging up the
mountain with
beauty all around
and inside,
too
a place where i once
dreamt of being
warm and opposite
your intellect
ever devouring

a fearful hush is felt
as a blanketed pressure
of extra gravity falls
upon the suburbs
as everyone tries to hold
the same looks on their faces
whenever the law sulks
around

but count yourself lucky
if you have forgotten about this creature
the law

who started innocently
as homework, chores
but has grown with you

now with eyes that pierce the night
like spotlights in the sky
like magic
walls can materialize around you
cold and thick
thrashing you around
the law will grab you by the neck
sudden and deadly

the law exists to traumatize
those who do not fit the mold
whose faces cannot hold long enough
when the spotlight is upon them

i must confess i still see you often
well, parts of you
that is
in other women
whom i dare not talk to
selfish
embarrassed
i feel
that i wish those parts were whole
and backwards in time
always backwards in time
like out of a cannon we would go
on fire, too

i think
if you could see me now
able to lift both feet to walk now
and quickly,
even
you would smile that
hungry smile
for a cut of meat deeply within
and i’d have no choice but to smile back
i never had that choice

There was a time when the world was new to me
When I was a blank page
fresh and full of possibilities
Stories and dreams brimming unhindered
An ink away from greatness
Before thoughts of fear and uncertainty
Crystallized and masqueraded as experience
A Preemptive tactic against failure
A delusion

So out of unease and unreadiness
I hid

I hid from the world, from family and friends
Most tragically, I hid from myself
I made myself smaller so others wouldn’t feel threatened
I retreated inwards
A crushed paper in a bin
I refused to shine
Perhaps for fear of being seen
Or perhaps,
For fear of being pinned down and quantified
For fear of finding out I didn’t add up to anything much
Or for fear of dissolving
akin to a drop of sugar in a cup of water
For fear of hearing others call me sweet or other gentle things
And having those things become the standard to live by

But by hiding,
By selling myself short,
I unknowingly
enhanced and inhabited my smallness
I denied myself the chance to soar
I dulled out my light and forgot how to be great
How to answer
the call of every human being to figure out and fulfill their life purpose
The need to be great, not greater than
The need to be all that you can be
To at least try
meet the world unabashedly
with all your talent, passion, and resolve
To wrestle with your limitations and
stay true

***

R.i.p A life truly un-lived
Coming Soon: A gung-ho resurrection

when a man’s an empty kettle
he should be on his mettle
and yet
i’m torn apart

just because
i’m presumin’
that i could be kind of human

if i only had a heart

i’d be tender
i’d be gentle
and awful sentimental
regarding love and art

i’d be friends with
the sparrows
and the boy who shoots
the arrows

if i only had a heart

picture me
a balcony
above a voice sings low

“wherefor art thou
romeo?”

i hear a beat
how sweet

just to register emotion
jealousy
devotion
and really feel the part

i could stay young
and chipper
and i’d lock it
with a zipper

if i only had a heart

(Originally written by Edgar Harbug)