Violent mornings of birds chirping, scattered nail clippings
and mid days of doodling, cafeteria nightmare of pointless chatter
and incessant chewing and gulping, and afternoon worn-down faces and
listless corpses, then sunset’s corrupting leisure of beer drinking, corrosive seduction, and self-abandonment up to the midnight burps (a Cinderella’s reminder to not bring any stranger home or their STD s ), echoing mama’s “your body is a temple”, thus stumbling back home, and halfheartedly munching on the thought-resolution that “Nobody will fill my emptiness with crap!” And all is well and good until another morning comes out pointing at the zombie in the mirror, and insisting on selling its soul at auction to somebody else who could do better with it.

I breathed
and every star was gone from my sight
but not gone from me
because I could remember
the shape of Ursa Major
and I could feel the Dipper
and taste the Southern Cross
and in a moment the heater,
it flared to life and suddenly
the stars came back to me,
and now I remember
that I remembered,
and I think that may be
just a tad more beautiful
than all these sweet, sweet stars

beer, beer, it’s hard to describe
the more i brew the more i imbibe
the more imbibe the happier i feel
so lets drink beer
before and after every meal and then later in the evening
perhaps right before bed you could have another.

So at least we cut ties
like we should have cut ties
so many ties before.

There’s a big brass bell
that hangs
on the side of a building
downtown, near the
galleries and Delicatessen

It shakes so hard that
I think it will fall off
and perhaps I will stand
just
beneath it, so the fall
will crush me so

But my trusts had no
issues,
they were issued freely
if carefully and well funded
and I know trust fund kids
and this ain’t how
it’s supposed to work

But here I am, just beneath
a big brass bell
hoping
that I will crush myself
beneath the weight
of my own red rage

it wouldn’t matter if the rhythm was fast
or slow or if the words rhymed with any reason.
if people heard the music and found they
were taken by surprise, that would suffice for me.
for a season.

I heard about a man,
once,
with trust issues and when
he was proved right
no one was amused
and there was no mirth
in that vindication.

Never met the man
or his problems
but I feel his pains
as they reverberate
off of every wall and
corner and the big brass
bell
on the building downtown

I wonder if he’ll ever
trust again. Then,
I guess he hasn’t so far
and I guess he was right
and so what does that say?
Should all our trusts
have issues?

Do they?

When I was 17 my heart was gray
then came stilettos, cigarettes butts
and love at arm’s length.
I lived life as if it was real
But things don’t really change
I still lie alone besides a railroad
breathing in sunset clouds and
whispering to myself “dream go slow”

you are slightly deformed
and while I consider eating you,
the thought of your strange projection,
bursting in my mouth,
is slightly sickening;
and though I know that in a dark room
i would never notice,
in the light, i just can’t do it.

so i will zip you up,
and lock you away from the outer air;
then i will forget you;
and in a few weeks, purely by accident,
perhaps i will find you,
and perhaps I will marvel,
and perhaps my curiosity will lead me
to take a long overdue bite.

in the chorus you said
he was your daddy
and printed on vinyl
with all that passed
you’ve got to play that track
still
it’s your most requested
biggest hit

that night we toasted
to liars, and
everyone looked around
then to their feet
and i added,
“for wasting all our time”
and everyone felt like i
was talking to
just
them

then, when the stagehands called
and there was no one at the mic
i knew you’d felt your mortality
i knew all your songs had died
and they’d find you at home
pulling out a strand of hair
every second

the first few miles never make it into my imagination.
you know the ones where you’re wonder if there
is any hope at all of completing this craziness
the ones where your body is still not set into rhythm
and you’re passing over roads you’re still familiar with.

they don’t enter the equation because they’re not the
point for the run out of this state with nothing on my
back. just my shorts and nothing on my feet by these
sandals.

in my mind the ground is dry and dusty and the cars
drive by too fast. i’m always just short of a full on death-wish
and every step brings me closer to a goal i dont understand.
but the people on the way are friendly because somehow
i arouse in them a sympathy for a universal human condition

the desire to run like hell and never look back.

We have compiled a list
based solely on the various
aspects of the true nature
of your eternal, immortal souls

The list has been limited,
by virtue of sheer necessity,
to the men, women, and monsters
gathered in this room.

They have been judged
unceremoniously, and will be
persecuted in kind.

The brown-skinned woman in
the corner has shown no lust
for life and no drive or
want for any sort of goodness.

She has stripped the love away
from each of her friends in turn
until the hand-full that remain
are but names to whisper curses
to in the lonelier evenings.

The tall, fleshy man with
the greasy hair and the smile
ever-present has faltered
time and time again.

He has taken advantage
of the hearts held out to him
and cut them as deeply
as he could while they stayed
beating. His words are
minced and rotted and have
no use, least one needs to check
the foulest speech through
a microphone. His silence
smells near as wretched.

The thin fellow who has
difficulty speaking has
forced every hand and taken
every chance and particularly
those chances that
were never his to take.

He is ruthless and spineless
in even measure, and he
dares make waves where
he can barely swim himself.
He had potential once, but
he proves evermore that
‘potential’ is a dirty word.

We have deemed these men
and women and monsters
unfit to persist in this world,
and would press to set
this room on fire with doors
locked and barricades stacked
unbreakably. It would be,
however, unfair, for
the other poor souls trapped
with you.

And as you stood there
as I played, your gaze
leveled from behind those
spectacles and your denim
jacket pulling your dare
-I-say perfect breasts
out just enough, I could
hear your voice over
the blaring of my saxophone,
and could feel the burn
from your big green eyes,
and I don’t know where
you are, and I don’t know
who you are, and I don’t
think either of us give
a good god damn, but
I could feel the burn
from your big green eyes,
and the saxophone was
in the way, but I was
smiling

looking up,
that’s all there was;
and as the question hung,
what answer could there be?

and that’s when we turned,
and walked away.
never looking back.
never holding on.
never regretting.

our bodies are not designed to cope with such a universal human experience. our stomach lining melts away before us, our brains fill with images of terrible things and wake us from our slumber then refuse to let us return.

vomit colored vomit surprises no one
on the way out. their shock is more
in response to equation they’re running
in their head to include the resistance of both
air and gravity, and this projectile’s seeming
insistence on ignoring the interference.