the stars, the sea, and sleep.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Let's Not Pretend Hazards

It's no surprise why I am up right now:
To send messages with no subjects
To doubt my very own existence,
Only made up of repeated plans.
Let me be my own Madagascar
Let my ports fill with clots;
I can tell what was gotten from me
In the purple between the grass.
Unforgotten and taken back,
Gravity has been waiting it out,
Just a cold rock burning up
Before it could fall down.
It's no surprise who is the best
Just because it can’t work out.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Posthumous Posture

There are vows that break on contact
And slip down a bloody cheek
As old habits, tenacious like
Chewing gum that loses flavor
Before a single world has been said.
And although the receipts beg to differ,
I shivered a shout that settled in the car,
Drowned out in hot air from the engine.
Welcome back to the firestarter's club,
Knowing what you love the most
And ghostly keeping it warm.
There is everything I will never know,
Just keep control to let it go.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

It Isn't Fair

The night stood still for a calming soul,
Not even a whisper from the poison oak.
Quiet and contained, paired warmth, lungs bright,
I said every word thinking no, no, no,
But what do I know. You said you were sorry
Like you couldn't even breathe right.
Spin around the calendar, here we go again.
This time let everything be said and
Take it to the grave or take it to your bed.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Carriage House Return

Look at me through sixteen years
Look through the things
That you don't have to fear yet,
What you're not even near yet
Or even better will never have to know.
If I could show you everything now,
And wrap your heart in guidance
Then my misalignment
Would forever be excused by it.
And sorrow salt can call for quiet
On the set made by an amnesiac.
I've forgotten my well hidden scars
From falling asleep on transcontinentals,
Washing my plastic, and living on rentals.

The Respect Is Mutual

I've been thinking about heaven quite a bit with these kids,
Wondering if I can get much higher,
But there surely is nothing like this.
He said it himself with quiet irony riding shotgun
And a dusty tape deck playing static tracks.
But we're always moving on sun-faded streets,
You loop nostalgia and call it a beat
Tuck in under some vocals and call it a feat.
This creation is man-made and self-destructing
And we stand above inhaling the smoke before the ruin
Constructing exactly how it is going to end.
Old friends can always throw something new in
Just took keep the same fire burning,
To feel the heat of our youth light the truth we are learning.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Little Hands In The Big Sky

This is a day spent lifting blankets,
Getting comfortable again with the sedimentary
Elementary aspects of romance, tragedy,
And familial grace that takes place right before me.
This love is simple and soaked in sun,
And got so much better when I was no longer
The only one under their wings.
We are growing like proud wind,
And you're only getting louder with things to say,
Sing me this song that I never learned to name.

Turn On The Christmas Music, It's Almost Thanksgiving!

I'm not one for remembering names, but
Hello, angelina, you tiny savior
Adorning a pungent pine tree.
You were in the form of an instructor of pilates
And a musician who struck a chord with me.
The machines took over too early,
So four hours were spent knowing Logan too well
With 40 boxes of greasy cardboard in cardboard
With water in plastic and goldfish in bags.
Seven hours later, the magic worked
From a plane window I saw the pollution and the pier,
Made it on to the other side,
Coast to coast, I marked home a little before 7.a.m.
Everything's almost the same.
I'm home, therefore I am.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Big-Faced Propaganda

There are vultures behind the tube.
Say good morning to your breakfast,
Severed weekly in a sleepy room
Almost as good as hitting the snooze.
Just five more minutes please,
I'll die if I have to leave this bed.
Covers and contours of the skin
Have never fit as well as love is a war film.
You're special because you're normal
So just shoot me for every finger on my hand raised to fly,
Or play roulette with words and faces
With mental displacement at an all-time high.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Inertia Is Always Positive

This is your new club, your melodramatic pop
That rocks in the coke that did a little trick.
I get in the picture to make a feature stick
With eyes that don't roll, but they sure are tired.
Get wired, get loco, it doesn't matter what they do,
All that matters is what you do, I mean, you knew it,
Sometime around midnight Wednesday night.
If there is a descent, then there has to be a flight.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Reliving In Prosthetic Log Structures

You forget, boy, the scars make it feel like perfect skin.
And when words are spoken that you don't hear
Don't you fear someone else has already been let in?
Trees once had branches as yours as do mine,
But when they've been cut, do you still not feel them?
Little hairs stand up in the wind,
There are whispers to which they listen
And vines entwine from the roots keeping tabs,
Icy rivers in your skin reach the limb's running hand.

A Boy In The Party Scene

I barely caught the bus out,
Buzzed in with a silent phone,
A hot head and cold thumbs
Waiting at this station.
I used to know you
But it is nice to meet you.
Tonight I caught perspective
Thrown from a lively mouth
Perched on an exclusive porch;
I tongued them with a bitter taste
But it goes down easy
And I go on my way.
Wandering off into the night
To catch a bus with its lights off,
I'm a little cold, but sitting tight.

Friday, November 19, 2010

It meant everything.

Angle down the dim-lit screen
Remember each retinal engraving,
All too real to keep you
Comfortably safe in
Something made up, then
From the trimmings and truths.
Some youth escaped as a scentless gas,
Combustible and made of past
Mistakes, (or) the things that made you great.
Tell me what it's worth now
Mixing weights with alcohol.
Sleep tight, precious, you left us wide open,
Just how far will you get from your hoping?

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Make Your Points (Each One Counts)

The first stone:
It isn't a matter of who throws it,
But where it lands.
Obsessing over measurements,
I taunt two buckets and balance beam.
To take is to give, and I'd rather live without
The time solidified under pressure
Turned to sharp rocks I pick from my feet.
Walk it off, but don't you dare walk out,
The engine is screaming and you've only to shout,
Kick into the gear that won't get you kicked out.

Velvet Reconnect

Your spend your day mostly in night.
The fabrics draped around your bones
With a buffer of untouched skin,
So the sun kept his filthy hands off.
All the while, I tried to piece together
The present and immediate past
With passages from your book
And animations that took the form of your body.
It's nice to see that you're still alive
Without further examination,
On behalf of the memories I protect.
And neglecting all the edge effects,
This soft contact is light at best.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

A Tree In A Storm

We spin wildly from perplexing lethargy,
References indefinitely redefined
To ultimate become rag dolls at the finish line.
As I lie on my bed, I question the geometry
Of limbs and the symmetry of my head.
But there are no new angles to discover,
They all stem to the same new beginning,
Synthetic fruitfulness, a future as we make it.
Cold air blows tears in the eye of a hurricane.
Storm the front and squeeze juice from this surname.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Req. #

Here's one step into preemptive sun
To dry up my skin and show more wrinkles.
This is the closest I'll get to acting my age,
I'm not getting any taller,
This is the smoothness of my brain.
Call me not the greedy one,
I'm just looking for a challenge.
I'm letting go of shaky ropes,
Unmoored to float if managed.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

What's Wrong.

Like picking vitamins off the floor with dirty hands,
I am listening to songs about inadvertent blasphemy
At the speed of sound at sea level,
Thinking it’s a way to finally get free.
Every night is happy hour,
Blackout drunk from exhaustion,
Stumbling over calendar boxes to find where I need to go next.
Not backwards.
It's imaginary, ordinary…the sound of my mistakes.
Alone in a subway car,
Always: from one thing to the next.
Who put this table on a clock?
It just keeps turning and turning.
Twisting implications and explications apart.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Alternatives To Sleep

I wondered a.m. or p.m. as if I had a choice
After having closed the curtains at noon.
It was the perfect day to run away,
But I had already turned myself in,
Partially in-
Complete, but a night's work nontheless.
The lids were cracked open,
Smacking back like measuring tape
Taking numbers on the length of deep red veins.
I didn't want to wait for the sun again,
The solstice when we'd ask each other,
"Are you Tom or are you Summer?"
But more melon light reflected through the dirty glass
And the music never stopped when the night was over.

Friday, November 12, 2010

A Cold War Between Two Radiators

I keep on putting on these heavy dark coats
Like something damned and cold is coming in,
But who would've thunk about the clunk coming out,
The scrap metal that scratches my throat
On the way to a disjointed mouth.
Some take it for disbelief, some take it as meaningful
As leaves blowing off the vine to define this year's fall,
But dirt bleeds through the walls
Because the ground that I stand on is dying.
And until that day comes, I'll swallow my words,
Throwing all sorts of friendships down the well.
Kindly, fuck most everybody else.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Adium is a hell of a drug.

When the hands reached out around the clock,
They found themselves back where they had begun,
Strung-out and empty-handed; nothing happened
Between now and then, A dream is just a dream
And this changes nothing.
The more I talk, the less I know,
So come on, bones, all the blood is waiting.
We are humans with our hearts
But lawyers with our cases,
Protecting what we meant with something else we say.
The plaintiff is just an atheist, turning bibles into books;
I had criticized the retraced lines, but the author is a crook.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Pillowcases Are Empty Shells

I regret breathing in as deep as I did
I took in more air then I needed.
And in the gluttonous exhale,
Stubborn inertia has prevailed.
Some of us haven’t changed one bit.
The mystery is up,
I can sleep duty-free.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Addiction vs. Dependecy

Everyday is a descent in a windowless car,
It's time to get your sweaty fix again,
Being pressed against metal as satisfying as a collision.
So willing to lose control and drift into an uplifting routine,
You are hydroplaning to be freed from extraneous friction.
Feel the tensile strain pulling tightly on your pulsating skin
And the beauty outside turning into hot stone from within.

Monday, November 8, 2010

It Is Always Stationery.

Sitting here idly, being lectured to about efficiency,
I sang the alphabet backwards from "A"
To find another way to spell it out for you,
But I could never understand any word I ever meant.
Every spine has had its crack,
And every page has aged and bent.
I could still read you with my eyes closed
Under my lids hid my best notes,
But I fell asleep with your name on my lips,
Stripping dreams from becoming ghosts.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Ocean Snot

You're as lovely and predictable as the waves
And every day you drown me is another day you save.
It burns my yearning lungs that are learning how to breathe,
That shake and quiver as my vocal chords shiver
And from the soft offshore wind I begin to slowly speak.
Hello there! Okay, goodbye now, see you soon.
Tether your weathered heart up towards the moon.
It's funny, the sand briefly remembers my hand,
Honey, I think I see it coming again.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

A Childhood Scar On My Knee

I woke up in my socks and missing her
So I ran and slid into a slammed door.
And whenever I see this kid who didn't hurt at all
With a dumb smile, fake tears, and his hands on the ground,
I always have to pick him up and see
What I left in those eyes and what ended up eroding my skin.
I had lit a candle in a vast empty room called a dream,
Between his hands and mine, it is clear which ones are clean.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Find Function

When the casual overlap becomes a lot less casual,
You will sit cross-legged and I will suit up.
We will talk about the formalities
And discuss the well-formed habits that
We've worn down to a point, to sign peace,
Or to pierce the night for more
So that the stars run down the blackened sky
And collect in our mouths in a soapy mix.
Hopefully it's nothing that decisions bad
And a splash of sour could not fix.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

City Boy

I am made of meat, steel and electricity.
My body is a downtown with appendages
Pulling in tiny cells to push them out again,
More of the same only with elasticity.
We look with screeches for our grip,
And a sick mother nature coughs
Trees into the holes in the sidewalk.
This city never sleeps with the traffic lights on,
Not nearly as well as you do every night.
I'll be awake for you in the morning,
But I won't fall asleep by your side.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Revive The System!

On a charter bus back home
Fading westward into the night,
The girls were being mean
Just as they always are.
There was dirt under my nails
Unfinished business left in a river,
All turning into rust, human red.
It was our last time out of our element
But still in the same family,
A chemistry called intimacy from laces crossed.
The future on a present string, the memory's not lost.

Apropos of Altered Slow

My sleep was strained in a sieve
And strung together carby and complete,
Waiting to be seasoned with doubts
Like salty hair, silky matted down.
You're wet with inspiration,
You're dripping into an ocean of
Bleached fiber and hesitation.
These names don't make sense
Due to a fever that persists,
You're running numb in the cold
To feel the things that don't exist.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Smile Held With A Bracket

I woke up with a card on my stomach,
A warning much better than knots
But the smell of forget-me-nots
Still serves the same function in its absence.
As city planner, I'll collapse the span of bridges
To take back all the ridges of lost time.
And from the snapped suspension,
I will find the inclination to breathe with purpose
Like the machine I want to become.
Give me crutches with hooks
And I'll string them up again,
Feet barely on the ground like a marionette.
Yeah, I'll wrap this life with splints
And stitch it up with no regrets.