My breath is carbon monoxide sometimes
It wilts plants and poisons me too

on those mornings I just try
not to breathe

there are some people out there,
the kind of folk who never
complain about the spiciness of
food.

or hershey-squirts their brains
out after mouth-melting burning
caused by peppers of the hot assortment.

and those people are my friends.

the bugs try and get in
my cat rests lazily on the windowsill
i am cement on the floor

the longer i sit here
the harder it gets to move

wish i had important things to say
or some motivation
to knock the bugs off the screen

cuz the longer i sit here
well, you know.

i saw my future in a dark pit
of a cesspool and knew i could
not deny it.

thankfully, a few years out
i don’t yet have to face the music.

but when that day comes
(should it come indeed)
i’ll close my eyes and run forward
with all my might into that
life-sucking haze, because
if that’s where i’m supposed
to be, i refuse to be anywhere else.

For Tara 

even when our kisses 
are as brief and hard to catch 
as the sparrow landing on the branch
the bird song will whistle my heart beat. 

Sometimes I am
the drunken sunrise painting of a man
yelling, blue fisted, in cigarette cheap beer knock-off ecstasy
at the parking lot of my stasis
even my well-rehearsed rooftop sermons
are somehow forgotten. I
have spent all my years trying to learn
to exalt and still struggle
to the sing the finish phrases of
hallelujah. I force out

Hallelujah,
for man-kind
Hallelujah
for beauty
Hallelujah
for love

I am gritting my teeth
on the precipice of an understanding
where I’ve stood for the bulk of
my elephantine lifetime
and lips parted been

BLOWN

back to the in-between a thousand times
Only to claw through the desert
back to the mountain
And still find no answers
No war calls, no prayers

And man-kind
sings in me
And beauty
sings in me
And love
sings in me
I still have not learned how to sing.

I would burn both my hands
and forswear all future holiness
to speak fully, once, and gut myself
just to meet the fire inside me,
fire of love, bellowing

HALLELUJAH

from the empty space
behind my impotent tongue.

Writhe tongue.

writhe,

writhe,

writhe unholy terror
behind tongue and clear out
with ash blockage clotting
the throat and lungs and
writhe blood clots stopping the
finger tips until

the fire, holy fire of love,
is clear of smock excrement
and can be released freely
and barrel forward at the
breakneck of intention
without burning
Intention of

Hallelujah
all man-kind
Hallelujah
all beauty
Hallelujah
all love, truth, holiness, hallelujah

I am the dirt of mankind,
but I sing praises to the faces
on mountaintops and statues,
hallelujah, from the rooftops,
exaltation and ecstasy
from the vagabond unshaved in
dying towers, hallelujah,
until we shout ourselves hoarse
and attain holiness
even just before death
And in dying holy, exhale,
truthfully
hallelujah
from our open mouths
before swallowing the rain
and drowning holy hallelujah
for the drowning of man-kind

Just to remember
Not to forget
The Fire.

i like to hold congress
with my past selves
i have them frozen in time
to help me debate on what to do
even if their opinions are
naive
i still value them
but these days there is more silence
and, i do value silence, too
but i’m uneasy here
because either they are dying
or i’m really lost,
now.

the maggot is disgusting for it feeds on the dead and turns it to nothing.
as such i can figure no more perfect a representation of our own perceived wisdom. that which is reducing us slowly to nothing, gnawing on us as though already decaying.

i need me a mood to compliment
my choice of words, to give rhythm
to my meter and bring a background
to my poetry. but i lack a mood.
altogether feeling-less perhaps due
to the busy. perhaps due to the
grind, where i’ve grown comfortable
and rather enjoy myself. feeling very
little other than a longing to continue
and perhaps have a few minutes for
a smoke in the process.

the climate drove me in
i read books about the climate
i knew the author in a dream
i science the scene
testing it with bookly intent
just like my ol friend
i go outside when it’s sunny.

Deep breaths and
a particular sense of dread
that the parts are all breaking
are typical in these situations
though you’ll find
that the breaths will get
shorter
and if you’re lucky
the dread won’t spill over
in to reality but
alas,
that’s just usually
how these things end
up

Why is it so awkward?
I didn’t make it awkward.
You did.
Because every time I ask, something inside you says,
“I should, I should, it’s right.”
But you say, “no.”
Something squeezes at your intestines,
getting caught like a moth halfway up your esophagus before you swallow.
But it’s there.
Something says, I’m rejecting it.
Something says, I’m spitting in his face.
But we’ll unravel miles of colored yarn balls
Longer than a curious kitten
With this and that
With this and that
With this and that
Yes, we could take a ride on this carousel and believe me,
there’s more than enough rope,
and there’s a horse with your name on it.
We can go around and around and around
so by the time we’re done, it will be hard to tell who’s who anyway-
Impossible to wrap it back up, present it as truth-
These gnarled, knotted strings become tripwires,
tripping us up
letting us give way to pretense- pulling the pin on explosions-
Messes that we couldn’t possibly seek to unwind and glue back together.
And there in the middle of it all you’ll say, “see, I told you so.”
But if you told me so, then why is it still awkward?
So let each be his own spinster
Pick the thread that best suits him
And let him trace it to his own sense of truth, you’ll say.
This, after all, is the road I’m on, and what right do you have to tell me that I have to pick one?
That only one is the right one?
Tumbling over tripwires, stumbling into traps you’ve laid,
bumbling backwards into the nets you’ve created with our words-
Your tongue twisted trails leading to no where but back to your own entrails stretched
as lifeline markers to navigate our return trip through the rabbit holes and loopholes you’ve crawled-
When you’ve finally found yourself and found there’s nothing to be found in yourself-
When you’ve willingly pulled every last organ out-
What will your whimsical words have wound?
I know the answer.
So you can spin it any way you want.
But why is it so awkward?
Is it awkward because you’re wrong?

i’m just saying
i might do it
you know this whole thing
is so grandiose
and there are so many reasons
so many possibilities
and
i’m JUST SAYING, man
I MIGHT DO IT

the feeling in my wrists is dulled
by the scraping of shirt-cuffs
but the feeling is dulled
so it is no matter at least
until they start to sting
again

you know you’ve got it bad
when you’re standing in a plate
shop imagining yourself smashing
every piece of porcelain in the place
and you’re not a bull so you know you
weren’t born wired this way but you cant
help but identify with said bull and his
love for china.
in small pieces.

the very point of this suggestion
was to relieve the stress I’ve had of late
but the result is not at all what I anticipated.
and now I’m standing in the lobby
of the hospital in my white briefs
staring at the visitors staring at me
wondering why I ran screaming from that room
what could have possibly possessed me to tear the IV from my arm
and sprint
weren’t there folks chasing me or something?

anything?

are they not all the same?

twisted in some way

not morally equal

yet identically created

a magnum opus of one artist

to judge only as yourself

in the end just the same,

like a million random ghosts

and so many of them confused

am i really that confused?

there are folks here visiting
from france and their accents
sound fake but are decidedly
real despite what you might think.

their opinion of cheese is that
it belongs not on a cracker but
inside a pancake and that’s a real
thing.

– you fucked up
you really did
do you know how you’re
going to fix it?

he paused and looked at me.

– no.

i responded completely honestly.

– good.

he said in wisdom.