the stars, the sea, and sleep.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Water and Syrup

With lemon drops in my throat,
All the sweetness is spoken sour
And within an hour flat,
I am.
They keep their hose running,
But it is your luck that runs out.
But you need to walk out slowly,
Blood merely wanders in your head.
Your in the dark of night.
The light's already dead.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Hailstones

Let me just pretend, just for a second
That these hailstones are just blunt arrows
That got cold without their quiver
And this vertical river stiffens from a long trip
As I watch from the inside,
Sipping my tea and breathing in balance.
A great idea tips at the ledge of my tongue
Only to be swallowed in nervous gulps,
Because you found me out.
I'll stand in the doorway with my hands in the air,
You know I would never walk in.
I've already walked out before
And my only re-entry would be
Gliding back down to earth,
Not a care in the world for all that it's worth.
I hope the inertia of your courage
Will swing you back in step,
Because that globe will keep on spinning
Through your excitement and regret.
I hope both your holding hands
Hold the happiness I hated
And your laughs will spark a sun
Where all my dull-lit stars had faded.
These hailstones wake me up
To a separate, simple light.
It's gray with no surprises
And it whispers, "You're alright."

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Crooked Landscapes

The gray ground and gray clouds in the sky
Are perforated by rays of golden dotted light,
I might just tear it open.
It is coming to an end now,
And the western hemisphere explodes like shredded cotton
In a spectrum of dramatic blacks, silvers, whites,
Piercing blues piercing through the film on my eyes
That plays the smiles and cries of this silent mind.
Here are some rain songs for when there's no one to blame,
When your bed has been made, but still nothing is the same.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Far From Hope (Italy Red & White)

The cleansing smell has not been cleared out
For I am still here, it is still then.
There is no solution to the rosemary
And every pulse of sweet sound pollution.
Oh, there is no way that we can live the way we do
Like when we knew just what we did,
With hearts that were sieves and drained through the cost.
I had no more money and went on to the bank
So now I'm down by the river,
Fishing for wishes with stars on a string,
Waiting for the moon to wear out the sun's ring.

damnscent

stp.
yr snss r brkn,
y'r smllng up snt
in n lfctry, dble, vsl sns.
mthng out cnsnnts wn't mk a vc,
so mk ths cll-t-rms sbjctlss by chc.
it s tm t strghtn out spnl prrts
t mk ths wrld hve sm srt of mnng
wtht mkng yr bndng nck ct ff yr brthng.
wht's a fctry hrt tht s chrnng out spch,
bt frgttng th vwls n th lf tht you nd?
BRTH!

...your senses are broken,
you're smelling up snot
in an olfactory, audible, visual sense.
mouthing out consonants won't make a voice,
so make this call-to-arms subjectless by choice.
it is time to straighten out spinal priorities
to make this world have some sort of meaning
without making your bending neck cut off your breathing.
what is a factory heart that is churning out speech,
but forgetting the vowels in the life that you need?

Breathe.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Twilight Nightlight

This is the bookend to a night well spent
Or a morning poorly planned,
When these hands retrace ghosts
Lying on a bed of keys,
Playing memory notes in silent reverie.
They remember dismembered moments of light,
When everything was wrong,
But feeling just right.

Surprised Hands

When the devil visits you in your sleep,
Your dreams are flooded with
The love you needed before you left off,
Trailing your sentences until they were lost.
I am on this bed for operation,
Misplaced faces and miscommunication.
The ghost that we keep
Made the whines in the pipes
And the creaks of the sink.
The walls there breathe as calm as death
My lungs stay stiff and out of breath,
I am breathless in this scene
As less and less becomes in between,
But I cannot stay.
I only come closer to get further away.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

For the Standards of Emotional Inertia

The diffusion of clouds amuses the eye
As the moon speaks through trees
And puts whispers in the sky.
It is a sea of static from audible wool,
Like the torrential buzz,
Deep golden sun and muddy pools.
I am the high-reaching harmonies
Fading somewhere in the background,
I am the lighting winding up
And the warm thunder breaking down.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Frankness

This is critical hopelessness,
Belting out every frequency
Burning up every colored flame
M'aidée! M'aidée!
A May's day is too far away...
I'm throwing up cartridges
Hoping that they'd stay as satellites,
But this world is constant to the ground
And these stringless kites fall back down
Directionless and hollow,
So all that is left is the echoing sound
Of the optimist's tomb.

There is no flash, just the ghost of a boom
As the diary pages scatter about the room
And the dates on the entries cave in
And he looks in the mirror,
How he could have saved him.
Dressed up pretty by himself
With watery eyes and a water mouth.

Can you hear me?
Can you be dear to me as I've been dear to you
For I have feared for you in myself?
Home.
Your name is a bitter untamed melody
Of irony and iron fillings
From the bittersweet company of this life
In which I both lead and am led on.

No more sunlight today.
No more open door,
No more room to say
Nothing new that needs to be said.
Nothing grew that isn't now dead
Nothing flew that hasn't yet fled.
No one knew that this world could breathe
And take away yours with nothing in return.
And you bleed for what you need
While your lungs begin to burn,
Then it starts all over with a new approach to learn.

So if practice makes perfect,
Perfection I do not want to know
As much as I don't want to care,
And these words lose their weight
Because nobody's there to be cared for.
I did not ask for these sorrows on my chest
But at best, I've been given more.

This loss is non-conservative
And my greatest concern is that this is the truth.
This is the mistake that takes up all my youth
And if so, may I be saved from what I don't know.
God, let it be known, before I've grown too much more
And these cycling Fields grow as rank as before.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

People and Persons

I am lost in perspective: me, movement, and time
Depicted in shaky lines repeated,
Traced over to be treated with more lead.
It's hope to hold for solidification that
Blackens the cracks of unstable communication.
But to straighten these fingers already slipping
Would be to find the heart that I put all my courage in,
That was pulled apart while I stared at the point of origin.
Because sometimes you go blind
When the brightness in your eyes sets in,
And sometimes this life ends
While you are waiting for it to begin.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Dreams Without Television

I fell victim to the cataclysmic rhythm of whine,
Retelling to sell it just one more time
All fermented from being vented,
Renting out what was not mine.
They borrowed heavy sips,
But could not grip the empty bottle
For its fullness was forgotten
And rotted with the vines.
Excommunicated by the sheer momentum of time,
This empire declines from no variety, just sin.
And sobriety suffers the buffer from within
With a story, save glory, in which the bad guys win.

Srunk

Je cherche la première fois que je sentais
Que je ne pourrais voir en arrière,
Mais je déteste discours prétentieux
Donc je passe comme si déjà entendu.
Phase shifts will be the death of me...
Moments later, when it all comes rushing in
And flushing out this conscious session,
As I spent the night hiding colors in pockets
And spitting them out when it all came to an end.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Moving Towards Twilit Stars

At the most motivated, loneliest times,
It's under there.
It's hiding with the colliding dreams,
Pressed up close against reality
And getting tangled in her heavy hair.
Both solid walls and clouds are white
So I climb these flights of stairs,
And comb through flightless stares,
So that it may be made better.
And it may be put together
With a collar and real leather,
With almost nothing in between
The greatest element and me,
Under all those twilit stars,
Over all that moonlit sea.

XX-Dependent

A stutter on the time line is a shudder on the fine line of
After a collapse, just where do we stand?
Where is the placement of the face of your hand?
But I demand no explanation,
The end of one's path is another's initiation.
In a friendly reminder, my mind's voice mentioned
That every word is a progression that has its intent.
There are implicit indications behind music and doors
There are whispers of wishes in which starlight is stored
There is a beauty within, in and out of my sight,
And in the many little breaths that caress a lesser night.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Asymmetric Expression (Wind Down)

In a tailored tux,
Putting on my worst fit gloves
And ironically enough,
Crying over someone else's love,
Champagne bubbles make me troubled
And the chandeliers shake above as
I make my way to my seat.
There no sense of plot so
It's where it all should be.
Overdeveloped,
Underachieved,
Played on the third stage,
So separate and complete.
Different actors play the same
Different players in one game
Different games describe a name,
It's all the same with no repeat.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Good for you.

Your voice drowns out theirs and mine,
Your wet dreams dampen the night
Turned from sluggish to a halt
When you were just getting started,
Parted lips and clasping hands.
I dragged my feet through cold sand
I spun the moon until it burned
And twirled the ocean, steady churns.
I am waiting for my turn.
I am seeing, but will learn
So that I can do this better,
So that I can do this right.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

In Passing

Who am I kidding? Who has the time?
These missteps are mine, stagger-stepped on the line.
Divine or design, this year's trade-off,
Has become less of a trade and a little more off.
So this water stands still, stagnant and unthrilled.
The shore is a race in which I'm always behind,
Or pushing too hard against its will.
But lethargic, lapping waves won't get you any wetter
And in a year's overlap, and it's not getting any better.
So do me the favor if no other savior comes forth,
Just don't break my silent heart here on Killian Court.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Silverstein Physics

A blind dog has to learn more than tricks,
Looking at reflections of
Open doors through closed windows,
And digging for unthrown bones
Buried in fate's backyard,
Only to find skeletons.
Even if he could, he wouldn't see too far.
There are moves with no movements
There are signs with no meaning
There are counters with no point
To cut through any feeling, adjoining
Two different beings with nothing at all.
I stand here too close with support like a wall,
And the whispers in your inner ear
Keep your life balanced and make me disappear.
I'm so conscious, almost nauseous
As the gravity comes in fast,
Bombing through the sky behind impressionable glass.
The city lights streak, while I dream upside down
So it looks like a while until I'll ever hit the ground.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Aftershock Aftermath

Empty cans clatter as the wind blows them around,
I sit here on the roof with feet barely off the ground.
It is the familiar sound, some auxiliary,
Capillary thump-thumping noun
And silence, violence against the city.
The morning shines a different light
From gritty to pretty,
Peaceful to pretty picture portraits
That you frame in your minds cemetery.
Sedimentary layers of dreams and dead things,
In which life is death seen in circumspect retrospective.
And this perspective is elected from the zombies
In the stench of the tension that condensed on the floor.
A folding chair props open the door
Up here on the roof where it had happened before.
It bends like a page,
My spine breaks like a book
Full of prayers for the given,
Taken away from those they took.

Disaspora

Feeling like saints at the gates,
We manage the flood running in,
Rushing hard with the hopes contained
By construction cones and yellow rope.
And once through the door,
They head towards the roof
With mind out the window,
Only breathing when the wind blows
All their dreams teeming with sin.
And the waves come crashing in
Through the masses, through the stars...
This time I will wake up and head out to the car.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Waiting in the Front Door

Tell me this will be something else, or
Tell me I'd be better off
Digging up wells for the incoming swell,
Saving up sandy water for
When I'm feeling too well.
This water isn't clean
This water is what I need.
It is a variation of a common theme
That I am only an extra in this party scene.

On Holiday

The uniformed calmness of a long streak,
Embedded in the ground
Between the solid slabs of steady concrete,
Is disrupted by the kind talk and holding hands
Of couples in flocks, talking kissing demands.
Heavy lids keep out the dull light of what I did
While this tongue takes flight
And my jaw starts caving in.
So now I'm outweighed and jaded by the simple fact
That dreams must come true before they can come back.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Silly Veins

Who ever believed it would get so far?
The distance between the lungs and the heart,
The breath and the beat,
Have never been
Farther
Apart.
I start to reach,
But the word lingers on my tongue.
So the world grabs my fingers,
Stilled curled,
And pulls them back.
And by then I had known just what I had begun,
My tongue made a slip as it slid into "summer sun."

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Anniversary

Today I was trying to see how well I have forgotten,
But all I could see was how well you could forget.
I keep taking bites into fruits that have gone rotten,
You are the hollow skin in which I place all my regret.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Harvard-Weeks Loop

We get tired of ourselves in the consciousness we keep,
Wide awake and snoring, open eyes and fast asleep.
Looking straight and counting bridges,
Steady breaths while the river rests
As I sew them on like stitches,
Weaving steps into a nest.
If this world has made nothing for us,
Then how did it all get so damned and gorgeous?
Looking backwards and forwards,
Looking right towards us, we look back at the sun.
A peep through soft clouds, hiding strings on which it hung.
Insane by definition, but we are doing alright.
We're just running in circles until everything is right.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Peripheral Refractions

From far away it almost looks like home.
On this breakwater, I broke the surface
Of glassy meniscus to dive down,
The closest I would ever get to know.
So we crane our heads counterclockwise
Just one more time with sun in our eyes.
Now it's back to the clouds,
It's back to the lights,
It's back to the sleepy and slow jazz nights.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Effectively Nowhere

With woods and a jacket, I am most alive
Like the names in iron graves: Gloucester, 1945.
Dozens flood in after many hundreds had before,
The waves keep crashing in from foamy crest to ocean floor.
Forevermore, the sailor's horn is for guiding ships to harbor
And friends are close as families are closer than no other.
Something I hadn't learned to love came above never too soon,
As from the vastness of the ocean had emerged an orange moon.

Dragon Light Rotary

The most cautious signs
Lie beside the most rumbling roads
To the most humbling homes,
Low enough to skim the filmy water
Like the eyes of the son of a father,
Washed up on the beach;
A house by the cemetery
Means you'll see each other soon.
I spin in endless circles
From ethanol and dancer twirls,
So hold me closer to the moon,
This night both ends, too late, too soon.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

A Fork Splitting Embers

I place bets on a table set with
The silverware that compliments
These avant-garde accomplishments
As one goes dull for another's light
To slip enough to strike a match
Now uncontested, unattached.
And I burned down so hard, so fast,
But the shards of glass just fractured light
From the flames through smoke that rose so high.