where terror turns to terroir
and wind and waves to
calm, peaceful, fishing with a beer
and a good virginia tobacco
in your pipe.

there. right after the change,
i’m flying high as the smoke thereof

Thoughts are so very different
they have no boundaries, need
no explaining; they are words
and pictures but totally unlike
either
A picture still needs words to
animate it
Words are still needed to
describe a picture but a thought
has use for both, but is never
dependent on either
A thought is already alive where
commentary is cumbersome, it is
the wordless movie we have seen
so many times, we already know
the score
And expending one-millionth of
the time to think then the time to
explain—and even when we do
explain, the colors aren’t vivid
enough, the expressions aren’t
genuine enough, not quite how
we’d like them, the proportions
are off.

As she stands in the entrance
of the sanctuary, every sense
taking in the chatter, the perfume,
the palette, the cool air on her
bare forearms, the acrid residue
of a breathmint and still cannot
ascertain the beauty which is not
sight, and the voice which is
not words, which he says
to her

Enjoy, my daughter! Look
what I have done.

Your breath is staggered, no doubt,s
from the liquid coursing through
your veins.

Your little pump
coos and chirps like a mother hen
and even though your breath comes
so sharp and shallow
it feels alright

At least tonight your eyes
are closed, and the man screaming
two doors over is screaming just
a bit less.

You smiled a lot today,
and there was color in your cheeks.

things still hurt, sure,
because that’s how things go
before they get better.

The noose around your throat, though,
that’s been cut and tossed aside.

And you smiled a lot today,
and that’s the main thing anyway.

as space opens in the recesses of my mind
my back decides it’s time to give my ass
a rest. releases the muscles. relaxes.
i can bend and flex in new and interesting
ways.
thinking of things i haven’t pondered in years.
possibilites re-emerge.

Your great great grandad was a cannibal
in a cave in the mountains of Africa
and he might have eaten my great great
grandad when he came down, many years ago
to take your great great grandad back
with him.

Now you’re yelling and I’m yelling and
we’re both on the same side more or less
and fighting the same fight kind-of sort-of
and isn’t it a wonder of the modern age!?

Time heals all wounds, I heard,
and George said that all things must pass
and that’s true;

even with everything going down the way
it might have, all those years ago,
nobody has to eat anybody anymore, and
I’m sure as shit not taking you home
with me.

i cannot stop the ants
that crawl on my desk
through the day night
i know of their general
origin but cannot find
their home
if they have one
if they’re real
maybe they’ve followed me
for like eight years
maybe they’re inside of me
and more of a part now than
ever and are now running
across my eyelids
as a real physical metaphor
a real hallucination
the real power of the mind
in the dark
crawling around your throat
telling me to leave you,
while you sleep
because i’ve always been
the lonely type.

I keep drawing strawmen
sketched, smoldering somewhere on the backburner

my consciousness registers the faulty pitch and swings
right from contact I know it’s a knockout

shredding the stuffing out of scarecrows
stepping on a rake I already knew was there

lurching up like figures of target training
where I’ve been waiting to fire away

every argument wide with holes big enough
to light on fire and cartwheel between

but could we stop before another round
I’ve tired of this charade

and you would never say something like that
so shut up because I’m tired of arguing with you

holy ethiopian palm sunday.
it’s…. finally…. over.

praise the Lord.

Blessed be the LORD,
for he has wondrously shown his
steadfast love to me

Senses fail me
when I dangle myself from
the second story of our
red and brown house

Could this be when
everything comes out?
Worms with bats and
wicked little smiles
pummeling my mass with
joy(?)
As I swing on a line like
an empty pinata?

Your protection comes
you think
from your sticks in hand
and my feet off the ground

But be sure:
When I climb down I
I climb down to my feet.
You, contrarily, will
crawl back to your favorite
holes, again.

the bed holds you
like it did your grandfather
it helped take his leg, too
because you sleep with your enemies
so i now lie awake staring
worriedly at my leg
surrounded by my vices
who want to eat me alive
i must move or do
something.

Yesterday I cut myself on a piece of paper

But what a fool I was to forgo a bandage

I never should have stained blood
on your pretty white dress

Sometimes I wander to a river
rife with acids and oils
from refineries and other such
machinations and I sit and
watch the fishes float
and the sickly fawns
and coughing foxes lap
begrudgingly from its murky
surface and they choke it down
because it is all they know
and they ignore the taste
of the acids and oils
and sometimes the high-floating
fish is a low-hanging fruit
but in truth this is naught
but poison and given enough of it
every single one of you
will die without hardly living
at all.

The difference between agony and suffering is the subject of the pain.
Suffering is when you’re the one in pain.
Agony is when the one you love is suffering before your eyes

and you’re helpless to intervene.

my anger feeds off of your happiness
errant emotions you force into the moment
stupid unfinished lovesongs written to strangers
to every stranger you see, every day
whose frequency is innumerable
to which you profess, each is as important
nay i see entropy with each guffaw
i see desperation in the face of mediocrity
i see another dopamine junky
a sociopathic one, at that
licking the floor for happiness
in the form of laughter.

I found a truth in a bathroom stall

I cut corners and arrived in a cornerless position

I was left waiting once when the tide came in and everyone forgot I was drowning

My best friend is an animal

and if I’m lucky I’ll die in a plane crash before cancer eats me from the inside

But at least I am happy in my big blue hat

and now one brother
has been released and
the other remains under
devils thumb. and we wait
some more for an endless
coming, for our God who
doesn’t experience time
in the same way we do
(or so we’re told), for our
God who experiences agony
in much the same way we do
and we beat against the air
in a (hopefully) winning-but-
not-even-one-satisfying-blow
battle.

as i wait helplessly by for my
sons. to embrace and finally
not have to let go.

let the loneliness penetrate
i deserve it for the
mocking of the birds
which were chirping
i was
annoyed
damn me to loneliness
i deserve it for what
i said,
for the moments trapped
in selfishness
for the moments
which i strangle
the air
let the loneliness get me
like the cold
it’s what
ever.

say what you will
but i aint letting
go of this thing
which i’m slightly
abusing in the
name of freedom.

you think all
tobaccos are
created equal
because you
were taught
of the evils
of paper-wrapped
crap.

it is evil.

but briar wrapped
heaven is a gift
straight from
above.