peter pan

poetry

you’re not even the shadow
of peter pan
said the old man
as time stood still
in the place where you
wake up and are not sure
if you’re still asleep
and he lifts you
a bloated codfish, you
off the ground with just
the one hand, that
of an old pirate
and the other a hook
while you look around
frantically and feeling helpless and lost because no one
knows you here, anymore

are you
peter pan?
or are you
peter panning?

last night you remember
leaning on the balcony
drunk on whisky
or nostalgia
your childhood dreams crushing
under the weight of you
a bloated codfish, you
so maybe you jumped
or maybe you fell
or maybe you flew
off the balcony
t’ward
the second star to the right
until morning
maybe you woke up a changed
man whom saved his children and
the whole neverland from
the scourge of the adults
the pirates
the hook

are you
peter pan?
or are you
peter panning?

but you fell
and didn’t get up
another apparent suicide
round christmas time

being white is to wish to never have been born at all

poetry

being white is to wish
to never have been born at all

it is necessary
to apologize

to defer all understanding
of real suffering

being white is to be wrong
and to grovel in apology

to be born a foreigner
bereft of origin

on stolen land
with borrowed time

inheriting bloody tools
meant for laziness

being white is to be guilty
by association

of placing guilt
by assocation

on those guilty
of associating

with your father’s
brown brother

neither of whom
anyone has ever
met.

i am now exactly how i was…

poetry

i am now exactly how
i was in 2005
gripping a metal bar
my face flushed
with fear as i rush
toward the horizon
of sandusky
atop other metal bars
that drop you
and pick you up
before you fall
but the difference is

we ride the back
of a falling dinosaur
crying “there must
be more”
all billions of us at once
locked in by nihilistic
tribalistic
denial

you tell me symmetry is
overrated
as i even my bill out
tipping the waiter
finally finding out
face flushed and
terrified
that my death
is the unremarkable
kind

Valentines

poetry

Cowards two were they;
one, scared of action
one, too scared to move
each hiding from themselves
behind the other,
circling in an awkward dance
as two wads of wretched detritus
in an unplugged tub

Perhaps too dizzying was this decent
that the truth of things got muddled.
Perhaps this is simply
what cowards tend to do,
as fear is King to cowards
and they will do all that is in their power
to serve His high commands

so down a drainhole they descend
to be deposited downstream, perhaps,
or else skimmed out in a reclamation plant
and cast in to a vat of caustic chemicals
for to make the water clean

And they will revel in this fate for a while
for Fear, their King, commands it
until one or the other finds a new master
or they are both bleached to death
inside of a sewage treatment tank

Thursday February 4th 2016, 1:00am

poetry

I stand at the top of a mountain

A six month ascent has brought me here

I am cold and winded. I am alone

A six month trudge through Hell and up hard passes has brought me here

I feel as I have died a hundred times, only to be born again

Each new life shorter and crueler than the last, yet long enough to climb another hundred yards

climb I did, though it killed me

now I look over the great wide range

And in a moment of quiet respite, I stand at the top of a mountain

Only as I plan to climb another one

For the moments I feel pissed

poetry

I can remind myself of the real reason for things
and preach to myself about where my value comes from

I’m comforted at the foolishness
of my breathing thinking fearing
and pleased with the vanity for a moment
till the smile fades and the reality of my 6am
hits me hard again

but that’s why I keep preaching.

rubatosis

poetry

at 12 am you notice the sound
of your own heart beating
teeth rotting out of your head
you decide not to sleep tonight
and get high instead

you’re in love with a dead horse
these glasses cost you a million dollars
what do you do with your own time
but say what’s all been said?

are you your own fucking body?
is your body fucking you?
are you going to waste our fucking time here?
do you know what means what to you?

you make me feel like the bad guy

poetry

you make me feel like the bad guy
like i’m not good enough
you want me to lick your shoes
it’s fucked up that you keep asking
you pretend that it’s not fucked up
that you keep asking
everyone knows it’s fucked up,
but you keep asking
like i’m not good enough
you make me feel like i’m the bad guy
like i’ve still got something to prove
like being a failure isn’t bad enough
you make me feel like the bad guy
and like i’m not up to your standards
but you couldn’t care less about me
and it’s fucked up that you keep asking
for me to lick your shoes
i know that i’m not good enough
to be a friendly fucking robot
and i wish i didn’t care
i wish i didn’t feel like the bad guy
and my life wasn’t all fucked up
i am building a home at the
base of the mountain
because i couldn’t make my way up
please don’t visit me there.

Keeping Score

poetry

I could make a list
of everything you didn’t do
and I could set it next to
my own and I could assemble
a committee of fair and reasonable
unaffiliated parties who
with some deliberation
could assign point values
to each individual lack-of-movement
and when they tallied the score
I guarantee that those numbers
would be so damn close
it would come out in a wash
and Goodness knows we need
a good scrubing-down

And you were ready for me this time

poetry

But your smile and laugh
were as sweet as my memory
had ever over-exaggerated

You were the bullet-point
at the beginning of the word
‘beauty’

You shined bright enough
for me to shade my eyes
but not so bright to blind me

And You were ready to say
what you had to say
when I did just the same

And I’m not sure
that I’ll ever be ready for you

yours is a selfish war

poetry

you rush forward
in simple straight lines
bayonets readied to
receive the deathly gasps
of your fellow country-men
of your enemy
and after
you close your eyes
and bury it sharply
into their chest
you look back
desperately for some type of
approval and see nothing
but a general
atop a horse
yawning

Sometimes blue, Sometimes green

poetry

I can’t stop thinking about your eyes

I only want to stare at them forever

or at least until I am trapped inside of them

then I will rest easily and eternally

I will know what the word ‘peace’ really means

but I am toiling now for certain

I am only pausing some of the time

and in each of these fleeting stolen moments

I can’t stop thinking about your eyes

on wichita, ks

poetry

wichita is a pretty crack whore
who was cool in high school, once
but now an addict
selling her self and begging

as i sit with her on a street corner
before the winter when kansas
has warm fall breezes that travel
far across the empty plains
we talk sarcastically about
old inside jokes shared between
normal high school friends
but i won’t leave here without her crying
and begging me for change
and if i refuse
offering to sell me ass

it’s the oil running through
her veins that makes her cheap
and desperate

Monster

poetry

There is a monster inside of you
and inside of me, too
and it is the same monster
because this monster is omnipresent
like a God, or like an Elder God
with wrapping tentacles
with venomous teeth
and it does not feed so much as consume
and it poisons us with dark dreams
with horrible sadnesses and imagined perils
it’s toxin will teach us to fear everything we’ve ever loved
there is no medicine to bring us back to health
and even reason and good faith can do little to assuage its infection

This monster will go eventually
but only after feasting to it’s content
after we are left white and meek and beaten
We will lay in our own sick
and wretch over our hopes and dreams
but if we remain resolute
and only let our disease get the best of us sometimes
we will be able to stand eventually
and the tightness will leave our chest
the aches will leave our beleaguered muscles
and we will walk again nearly as assured as before

Then we will be as we have always been
but for the monster that we know to be lurking
everywhere and anywhere at once