the stars, the sea, and sleep.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

CardAgain

So here I am waiting
Mirror ghosts at my throat
Maybe it's just getting worse
When signed in blood on paper
I will tell you I was first.
It's a sad kind of funny
Like tickling a child so he won't cry
I want to see my own one day
I'd rather that, let me get by.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Lymph Nodes

Let's stay alive,
I don't want it to be hard to say, "forever."

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Birds Fly South, Then West

I didn't want to sleep it off
Leave it untouched like a wax museum
Salty shovels have dug the weekend's grave
Your path away.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Hung Up and Over

I'm just a drunk kid,
Lying in the memories of last night and this morning

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Endless West

The wind sweeps the clouds back out to sea
Day spent weeping saltless years,
They were done for the night
Towers wrote letters in the blankets they tore into long streaks
All of which ended never tapered,
So smooth like a bedridden last line.
How your eyes tried to hold
The sun up over the horizon.
Just tell me your were sleepy
A balloon once lifted left to sink
Quiet words were never spoken,
Mine never answered, none to think.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

The Notes On Which We End

To see you again
For the last time.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Springfield 709

Digging my own grave
With my head over my shoulder
And paranoia behind my back.
Streetlights shine like stars through broken trees
Missing their leaves like a baby yet teething.
Remind me again if this feels like breathing.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Mutual Friends

So blind to my own mirror,
Letting the fearless become the fearers.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Wearing Skulls

Sitting outside of a concrete home,
The wolf was around.
Leftover rain when the trees made a sound.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Burning the Midnight Hour

I am an envious wreck,
Look at the passenger mirror
That shattered before I could check,
Friends taken fresh parts of my reflection
Without a ring to call myself.
Calm down and lie that you're good enough
Songs watered down when they were new enough.
The irony, twisted gate led up to the old house,
Smaller than what we remembered from when we were younger.
A tempered moon sat behind a temperate tempest night,
Drunken concrete granted footsteps a way out of tempting flight.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Last Call

I am walking on this water,
Right on sea level.
Boat shoes sunk in the water
And eyes sunk into insobriety.
Even ounces and two twenties on the table.
I just wanted a clean slate
For all the miscreants who would create
The future of this state.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Meet Me In Quincy Market

On a wooden bench that supported us like a blessing,
We were tying tenacious knots with our fingers
Vows that pressed the snooze for just one more minute
Of silence; as I watched your irises, out of time,
Clean up the color that had spilled into your eyes;
We had made a mess under the summer sun.
It was the second green we were sharing together,
But we were gridlocked - a tick on a timeline,
Where two points on a map became
Twice two lips pressed against a single word...
You were the last one on,
I sat and watched you take off.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Close-r

The open door was a spectrum of emotion
She left as softly as a dream hands you back to your bed.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Stacking Pennies

Tinny truth on a wood table
Echoes
Spill-proof mattresses, TP and tears.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I Fell In Love With A City

Waiting for service,
Always waiting.

Monday, August 15, 2011

PM for AM

I woke up in ubiquitous shade,
Every color cooled off with a blanket of gray.
I started saying your name like I was colorblind
And breathed from my mouth
So that everything that came in
Would come out just the same.
Heavy air brought in the rain,
My chest caved in with mossy stains
But I never saw the soft white light...
Those red eyes said we'd have to wait for a while.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Get Out The Jack, Love

Hope is home,
I hope I'll be home.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Blink in the Rain

Windshield smearers in torrential downpour
Honestly afraid for our lives
Half-naked writing lude things in the condensation
IHOP, encores, and tips.
Ambient lightning from every direction
A watery hell rolled over
With a skyline of papparzzi and their terrifying lights
We tell each other we will remember this night.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Clairity

Your shadowing perspective was a familiar mountain.
I could see for miles and miles
So much value put together in the form of
The delicate words shaken from your carbon rough,
A mine shaft dug out of a retrospect year,
Like breathing in diamonds, so crystalline clear.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Young's Four

Prison bars held my cradling comfort,
With more history than we'll ever see
You asked me like a cheater,
"What number are you on?"
I answered to the teacher,
Asked her to tell me I was wrong.

Our Own Motto

Business women clamor over vacant space,
Venture capitalists staring straight into your eyes.
The bells ring of hollower glass,
Toasting to what would not be remembered,
Discovered land you jotted down with an eraser.
You are an explorer who is exploding
Going off, or getting off and going off...
But you remind me of something comely;
Please know that you have wronged me.





Thursday, August 4, 2011

Exactly

Smoothing the surfaces,
I am sanding with silk
The most delicate predicate-noun,
Unregrettably now.
It is the coldest summer day,
A surprising familiarity down the spine
Like a word older than the dictionary,
Suddenly redefined.
I can barely keep my eyes open,
Fixated on the live stream,
Now warm water running, hearts racing like dogs.
It filters the blood like honesty without pretending
When our clear bets are as real as it gets.
But we're still waking to see if it really happened,
What salty truth dampened the two-ply tissue.
I had been excused for the torch I carried.
The resolution felt breezy and most definitely right,
It buried worried flames and cooled off with the night,
The smoke gave out signals undeniably bright;
I don't have to keep looking, everything is alright.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

The Adventures of Swag and Calzone

Throw up your words shoved up
From your proud, proud chest.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Homeland Security

The shame of weakness,
Knowing you weren't invincible
A helmet won't prevent a skinned knee.

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Education

Ink bull diminishing iterations on a sheet of paper

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Bilingual Sleep Talking

A speaking finger returned a thicker collar
"I've always liked you, since the beginning"

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Set Yourself Up

The institution is a monster,
I've seen it tear people apart.
Steel strangles my speaking finger
While they both watch with bated breath.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Sharp Edges of a Question

Do you ever think about entering my body
Like a cancer or something plotting against you
Let me save or let me sink
How we speak but never think.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Stars In and Out of Focus

Morning struck through the window
As silent as my first breath,
Slowly burning of last night's fire.
Only embers from blown glass were left,
With the disposing clink left hollow
From what was sucked out,
A genie that told me to write in the present,
Giftwrapped in what was undressed in fake diamonds.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Coxswain Shots and the Midnight Progression

You're off to work, but I think I'll stay in bed.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Montauk

It calmed me to finally see
The salt you breathed while you were underneath.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Scab

The way the sirens echo off of the flush buildings.
We are rats in a maze,
A flightless bird that will glide and then lie.
Who are you fooling when your apple has a rotten core?
And the trash on the sidewalks are like scabs to a sore.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

A Minute of Rain

Your barriers are retractable tape
And audio recordings, press 1 for English.
Fundamental misunderstandings,
Invisible like the chipping nail polish.
The Met is not Montauk,
We'll go our separate ways.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Attraction Without Films

Attraction without films
Becomes awkward honest, worn-out true.
A thousand breaths before a point
Puncture words like sharpened joints.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Irresistable

Ice water 3hr sleep

Monday, July 4, 2011

Fireworks from the Inside

The heart breaking down
Sounds, but no lights
Looking through a dirty window
It's clear that no one is here.
I am carving hollow vessels out of wood,
To tread on ice water.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Statistical Outlier


"Except I would be with you
and thats right."

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Waiting for the Green Light

Not waiting, but looking
We find it, it's working.

Monday, June 27, 2011

60 Days

Genuine happiness revoked.

Sixty days counted down and lost in an instant.
The minute you're closer is the second I'm distant.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

In Less Than A Week

And they left you before they even asked
Alone again
You know again

Thursday, June 23, 2011

The River Is An Ocean

I am running in the rain

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Finite State Machine

From pitched ideas, underhand.
It's not code if they all understand.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Old People Thursday

Drinking all the beverages
Smooching all the ladies

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Money under the Mattress


With only a dime in my pocket,
I wasn't much about counting on change.
Last night in my bed, a ghost
The tangents of this parallel life
Matched by unparalleled strife.
I pressed my heart against a soft bed
To cushion the start of the verses it bled
For the jackpots and crackpots
That sound tinny to my ears,
And the phrases I coined
To break these phases of fear.




Friday, June 10, 2011

4867 Sunset: Holding

Now that old car rolls down a dirt road.
It is unfamiliar and unknown
It is a windshield point toward the front of a storm.
Now the sounds just slur and cannot differentiate.
Now the sun setting where it's safe.
What waits for me is this road that I have no choice but take,
And a gift bag of belongings for if ever make it.

That Lump In Your Throat

An old car stops at the end of the line,
Blindsided by the force of inescapable time: Chance,
The difference between a glance and a blow.
The difference between what I think and what I know is now time.
I'll have the time of my life, if I can only keep mine.
Please.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

10.8

Some things happen without warning,
The way it all falls apart
In figures and in literals,
But when it came it fissured visceral.
10.8 rattled my world and brought it down to build its own.
It would shake in every muscle
And break in every bone,
Only to show how far I'd go just to tell you how I've grown.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Thinktanks In A Mindless War

And as we sit on this padded couch
I find myself in a padded room
To bounce ideas off of.
Crazy ideas that I throw and catch like childhood play.
Look at me practice my no-good games...
Her minute chases his hour as mismatched hands from midnight until noon
There isn't much padding left on my calendar,
So if I must fall, I'm sure it will be soon.


Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Smoke Them Out from Under the Bridge

So I figured I'd just jump here,
I'm down the my last two in my pocket
And I'm not banking on them...
Instead I took a step back and asked,
How does it feel?
It felt as real as the concrete
Biting at my heels
To drain me like a cactus in the sun.
There were still goosebumps
Pushing prickly hairs
Perpendicular to my parched skin,
And sweat feverishly pushing out
Something I've selfishly kept in.

Monday, June 6, 2011

The Distance

Backdropped by infinity,
Out here we made ourselves divinity.
This world has settled to a controlled burn
And now we write our names in light,
The eternal flame that etches each page of our memories,
But also singes each the same.
Time has pulled this universe apart,
Until there is now nothing in between
A hand reaching into the darkness
Pulled by the gravity of brightest star I've ever seen.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Revisit

Floorboard creaks were footprints in wet sand,
Eroded but still familiar
These awkward steps are so dissimilar.
One foot drags another through the past
That digs a moat for the castle built into the clouds.
Your head is still in the clouds.
Lightning strikes and it all turns to glass;
Now I can see this had always been your plan.
You said, "Come down, love.
There is a place where we can say it all began."
And it all started with your hand.
The most timeless connection
Since the oceans met the land.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Zero

We watch steel fight against gravity.
I watch skin fight against vanity;
Let your sweater slide from your shoulders,
Let the heat escape like the words that fade
Under the roar of the flight man made,
When sweat ran down his sun-soaked face
And he found this woman's grace on earth too much,
Until there was nowhere else to go, but up.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

History's Repeating

Dear sophomore,
Hunger makes the hunter more aggressive.
History makes the mystery more impressive,
So I make these words more digressive
As you make this gene expressive,
Circling like the skirt
That now lines your youth's collective.
Safe like the home of which your heart's protective.
I am sincere as the fear that now nips at my heels,
Than manic twitch that hits the switch to what hurts from what heals.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Flying at Sea Level

You're boarding onto a sinking ship,
The sea is tugging at your socks.
Between gasps and grasps, your heart is calm;
Thanks for investing in your loss.
I'll hold you to it with longing's locks,
The lung's necessity for the ocean's lust
Hope's optimism towards the deepest trust.
And I'll trek this vessel across your turbulent words,
And we'll sink like hell's anchors
Until we can fly like the birds.

Among Adults with Children

A square foot blanket sits on my lap,
Barely enough to keep me warm
While I'm trying to keep my cool,
Shivering like a small dog afraid of the world,
The real world,
Who barks at everything
And doesn't chew before it swallows.
People just as subjects,
I am the object of affection
Feeding the starvees of attention with my own.
I would say my verses are a curse
From many years have practiced diction,
But my topics are entropic,
Just blowing hot air over fiction.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Splintered Wood

Start this right. When no one expects it,
Just let it collide.
I spend half the day wondering where you came from
And the other half chasing my tail.
Come down with me, roll your pants above your ankles
Dangle your feet from the pier like fisherman's bait.
Let them float on the water like the miracles you have shown me
Let your ghost find my bedroom like you had always known me.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

West Coast West Ghost

As a sun presses its yolk on the pacific pan,
The silhouetted hills roll into the haze
From tar melting and cars belting their age.
The convection oven bars glow back in radiance
And a star is shattered into a thousand candles.
I hold my ear against the cement and breath in
I hold my breath to attest the descent and leave in
Every little detail that a dreamer can handle.
A pulse that carries poison to every capillary
A heavy beat from steps of the burden that I carry.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Signs

Eastbound concrete from god-knows-where,
A tangle of freeways, a tangle of golden hair
From birth in a city intended for angels
Where I saw the devil in a cardigan,
I saw airplanes land and depart again,
I saw my hand smear blood like a lefthand pen.
But the sun now whispers on the nape of my neck
And the radio fills silence where any is left,
We're breathing now, all the city and smog
That makes your golden hair grow a little bit bolder
And shakes this old world that I've left on my shoulders.


Come Here (Banned)

This is grade school debauchery,
I took my dirty laundry to your place.
The dryer sounded like a jet engine
As my mind counted paper boxes,
A playset with trays set in the upright position
And the cabin crew seated for taking off
Layers of insecurities
Much more than a fear of heights.
My ribs imploded under the weight of your eyes.
First period alarm clocks, spin dry complete,
No cruising altitude in a stiff window seat,
Just a new smell of clothes, no longer my own
Folded pages now smaller, but in depth they had grown.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Wearing Out My Sleeve

I still didn't know any better
After months of retracing ghost lines,
Black wires that went through blacked out towns
To deliver a blacked out tone pressed against my ear,
The same that hadn't changed in at least a year;
It hung from my heavy shoulder,
Keeping me warm every day I grew bolder.
Now I write this letter with poster markers
In hopes that your light is getting brighter,
Because my hopes are getting darker.

Monday, May 23, 2011

The Arc of Light

Here we go, gears start low,
We're just warming up the engine.
My hands were still clammy from excitement,
Extradited to the home I left in flight
When I ran so fast I couldn't touch the ground.
Your words now hit me at the speed of sound
And I see your hand against mine at the speed of light,
Scarred around the brown of my eyes
As your familiarity arced warmth around my summer night.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

MeCa

It was the morning after the war,
After fighting the night with our lighters
I laid my aching head atop of a smoke-filled jacket.
Though the injuries sustained were minimal,
We were all criminals; it was time to get away.
From Maine to California in the same day,
There was no one to catch us but then sun.
And from my window seat it looked like heaven,
They were taking me home on a 737.

Friday, May 20, 2011

If the World Doesn't End Tomorrow

Sometimes it feels like
The world accelerates like the dashed white ghosts
That we lose in our blind spots.
I just wanted to see this through,
A funeral procession at the eve of June
The sky painted black and never too soon.
Let this whisper carry though the wind
Let it go to forgive and sin again,
We won't get much different
But we sure can pretend.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Final Descent

Loud packing tape unraveled from the spool
The room was hollowed out like a jack-o'-lantern,
Down to single candle in a tower fading out
As the night's salivating tongue
Shaved the warm light from the brick face.
Cardboard boxes slid across the dirty wood,
Shushing themselves in guilt as they were shunned
To the closest to keep for the next three weeks.
Kids scared themselves when their mirrors grew them up,
Their past now in careless stacks, saying every side is up.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Memorial

There were once bodies standing
Where they now sit.
The building echoes because
Those voices weren't the first ones
Those choices weren't the worst ones,
But you work through them for an answer.
I had the ball and told faith to go deep,
She said, "The backyard is free of clovers,
But it's okay because it's over."
The clock would not go slower,
Their granite voices came to sleep.

from 15 to 1

Sleepy trees on the battlefield,
Soldiers rest in their cots.
The drum line's roll is dreary
And the armories are only in theory
When you're fighting for the hypothetical.
I was arranging numbers in reverse-alphabetical;
It just didn't add up when I gathered all the sense.
I never learned how to count down too well,
Cut short like childhood scars
That made salty eyes open to an ocean's salty swell.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

4s+2c+1s

I grabbed at the sheets,
I swelled and then sneezed a scattered plot
Distracted thoughts put to rest
As consciousness reached its limit,
A pilot rushing to sleep
As all the blood rushed down to his feet.
He drew a line and erased it again
He drew a line and erased it again,
Gray matter was a fact,
Sweaty palms, shavings, and a pencil tracing back
To where it all best fit in,
A parachute tucked in between the cushions,
A note in hand that I never handed in.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Deserve This!

I can't.
Teach these lips how to shape my demands
Release these fists from about my hands,
Knuckles white like ghosts of those once willing to fight.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Minor Piner

When I fell I did not make a sound
Bows cocked like a lost sneeze,
A poetic tragedy, snapped to my knees.
When life flashed it stuck to my irises
Like sticky resin paused in the frame,
Stripping me down like an aching tree
Burning my bark and coming to me.
I could see the cotton lipstick
That you had kissed into the sky,
You were sending smoky signals
That were just vapors in a sigh.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Don't Call It A Comeback

There are dogs out in the backyard
They've been barking at the gates,
Chain-linked like it all made sense
Selling lemonade and chipping at the dents.
So I struck you like a car in motion,
I plucked you like the flower on a weed
And buried you like family,
With sugar, salt, and picture trees
With admiration, fleur de lis.


Friday, May 13, 2011

Punching For Studs

Under weak legs, this concrete floor felt like a bounce house
In which a devilish child broke every jump and I sunk to my knees.
And from giggles to gargles, I found my seat on deflating leather
With the consistency of a dying sea
Tossing and turning in a tempest of honesty.
She was falling asleep during her final rights,
Sick at the thought that she was finally wrong,
A feeling of weakness that was never so strong.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

That Huge Nostalgia Kick

The sun was on fire again, lit up everything around it.
We put it out with squinted salutes and fitted caps,
Salty beaches and shaded palm tree naps.
I clasped my hands over the crystal sand,
A prayer for spare change and a bottle opener.
Today we drink in honey, tonight we pour out piss
While California's burning in the sunset I will miss.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Last One

I fed off of your secrets like apples left in Eden
Whose ovaries carried bitter babies
That would be cradled in the ground.
Carbon copies of original sin dug under my skin
Through the hole left in my throat from birth.
I am not the one who told you first
That it doesn't take a surgeon to fall out of a tall tree,
These cuts are feeling breezy, yeah nothing cuts easy.

Making Decisions To Make

Goodnights are softer than everything else,
The pillow that rests under your head
Melting faster than the falling shelves.
Instead I count on falling books,
Reverse-engineering the sheep we have cloned
So that your sleep becomes restless
As your conscience tries to digest this.
I am a builder off of assumptions,
You are a reversal of introductions
That is very nice to know.
How are you? Hello.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Drink To...

As she fell I studied the conical geometry,
Its axial symmetry that could spin the world around
And everything would be the same.
You've got me dizzy from the consequences
Of diving too deep without covering your ears,
From mixing the water after not enough years.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Curseive

Originality took the form of faded pastels
And the sun stepped out of the room.
At ease, the air finally shuffled around
As the hotheaded stood up from the ground in dusty plumes.
They were brave enough to save the space for potential in retrospect
And to give the sun the night to realign his self-respect.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

No Reply

We send our voices in every direction
And then wait impatiently for a grumble,
China made plastic dancing
On an American made table,
With some English words wrapped in light.
It feels like the entire world is involved.
But when that backlight stays unlit,
A faded clock makes it seem timeless,
You pray for change so empty handed
You sit in silence and can't stand it.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Sleepless Perspective, Peace-Seeking Detective

I must have fallen asleep on a mirror,
The sun is shining from all the wrong places...
I've got all the clues, but there are no traces.
All I know is that it's 5.a.m and they've done it again!
Robbed me of my sleep with my pen still in my hand.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

The Rising Tide

The horizon was anxious in a rising tide,
The foreseeable future had met with present light.
They left in the dark like a secret being made
And each convenant given was another well received.
I couldn't feel what you were meaning
I couldn't see that you were speaking,
Your lips and my lungs were dead even,
I just breathed in every word that you were leaving.

No Thrice Magic

The sirens called you out in fear of heat,
Diaspora for the light your needs devoured,
To fall asleep alone,
Regretting every conscious hour.
You slipped each sip from under your sheets
And twisted them tightly in your fist,
Your bed was a ship that started to keel.
It was a genie in a bottle,
It was a drunk and polished steel.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

You're Going Slow

One foot drags past another,
I pull myself through water
That won't give back my reflection.
I never had an indication
To the turbulent nature of change,
But dropping coins into a fountain
Never made the bottom any clearer,
It never gave me a new name.
But when the penny hits the bottom
With its intrinsic value facing up,
We'll call each other lucky
And then we'll pick it right back up.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Play To Your Strengths

His muscles flexed like a failed rock climber,
Tense ropes that strained in unison.
It was a camaraderie he was conditioned to love
That spit out acid when they'd had enough.
He was thankful, sure, but never learned too well;
He had dropped the world, but he never fell.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Another Bed

As the lights stripped and unbuttoned darkness,
My throat tried up in the honest heat
As lies were pumped into the atmosphere,
The way they searched like bloodhounds
And covered every exposed inch of her body
Wanting to come true,
But were leashed under a window of sleep,
Looking over a warm lake and its stagnant view.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Nothing New

Bring sweet death to the choir!
If you've got ammo, then fire!

Friday, April 29, 2011

Fluid Dreaming

Run away like a runny nose,
It's all run down and too cold.
They said it runs in the family
But I ran the numbers,
Insufficient funds.
I thought I ran the town,
But running wasn't enough.
You left the water running
To catch up to me in my sleep,
But they've kept me fluid dreaming
And running out of what I need.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Apologpa

Some take a swing to feel the wind (that you missed),
Others to jump off at their highest point,
And I call them all crazy.
I can't even straighten the creases in my shirt,
Let alone the pride in my chest
That fluctuates as if with the impact of each breath of air,
Invisible like the justice as an average of luck and blunder.
"Your honor, you're so quick to judge!"
I apologized, but they said "Take a number."

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Mixy

As the plastic spins in symmetry,
I attempt to bring you near to me
With words as reused as the alphabet.
A, B, C, D, I took the E and got an F,
I'll leave out the things I meant to forget:
How many lines went in,
How does a sentence. End
A new one, begin with old grapes and gripe
For a lack of better words, this will be trite.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Landlocked by the Water

I slip under my sheets while I'm dripping in sleep,
350-count threads that crash over me
There are voices I hear before and after I fall asleep,
The lulling procession from dry land to sea.
You're a kaleidscope on a lighthouse exploding
In a maniac's choir and every note is eroding,
You put all your stars in a dream that is growing
Out of control, shooting out of your reach.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Electron Decay

Spiraling forth on these rings of delay
I keep losing count of 365 days.
There is no anniversary
There is no where we used to be,
Moving forward, thinking backward,
And all your static ropes go slack.
Feeling as fluid as the time spent
On this forever bending track.

Lying In An Open Field

All bets are off when the cards fall
And you find yourself knocked out,
Lying in the bed of a '52 pickup.
Some things were never meant to be
In order, en route, delivered.
You were floating 3 feet above the ground,
But it felt like you were 6 feet under...
Looks like someone's got cold feet,
And those words can't find a way past your teeth.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

In the Green Monster

I was in the heart of a city in its evacuated state,
Muscles all clenched as it stood stone cold in the night.
It was absent of the ambient warmth
That would save in the dirt and in the cheap plastic seats
From the roars and stamping feet it drank like blood.
This was a night out on the town
This was the quickly charging sound,
A lighting storm I had welcomed indoors,
Satiating and high above the floor.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Reignite

Your probabilistic procession was a cameo in indirect light
Mismatched pins we rebent and stuck me down quite alright,
And in all of your fractions of red wine and white noise,
I saw through black eyes and reduced to a boy.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Sequilizer

Your prose clipped as they pushed in the red
It shut you up nice, with a nail on the head
You were dead silent.
Then all of those questions would not stick
And with that, the lock remained unpicked.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Proballistics

You may be able to guess, this is the boiling point.
Your veins are like coils in your buckling joints
And your spring-loaded heart full of lead
Is pumping sweaty bullets out of your forehead.
Is it because you think you have a shot?
It's always dark inside the barrel,
So let me see just what you've got.

Your Laws

Hurl me towards your honesty
Project your heart on top of me.
The weight of history is heavy,
It makes it harder to push for change.
It's a balloon that will burst with a sudden pop,
You're briefly displaced, but then it all stops.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Under Revolving Stars

A muscle spasm grabbed my side
In a camaraderie I thought had long expired.
As sweet as milk, it hadn't curdled
And I found myself in the thick of renewal,
Peeling off nervous labels as a task my hands could do,
Opening those precious eyes for a more refreshing view.
I could see you in the outline of fatigue
And the cigarette burns from what's out of my league.
If you're asking for empty promises
I'd kindly ask you to just leave it,
But these contractions are an action
For which a counterpart is needed.

4 After 4

I've been drinking from the strangest fountains
You've been making sure this will actually happen
As I try to reach for memories like loose rocks,
Pulling out the bubbly card.
But this is poker and it's not hard to fake,
So thank you so much for your honesty,
You've honestly got the best of me.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Triangle Sentences

I lost what I was going to say after
In the wind on the breath I had written it on.
Your favorite song went 5-1
That you tapped between your finger and thumb
As you shaped the letter closest to what you meant to sing.
Lo-lo-lo-lo-look at me as I freeze in your tracks,
It started going cold, but somehow brought us back.
I am a sailor's son and you are a landlocked daughter,
You're not going to sink when you're safely in the harbor.

Friday, April 15, 2011

...and then there was one!

The spinning earth smeared cool pastels
On the blank canvas of a new day.
It wasn't the way we were meant to see it,
Like how your parents wrapped your gifts
And Santa left the cookies and milk
When mommy was on a diet.
Now cotton spilled onto the page
Cleaning up its own mess
While the rest burned under the work light.
No, no, this was the quiet shift into grace,
Pulling the blinds to put sleep in its place.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

The Best of a Normal Day

I never believe the words on the edge of a disk,
There is too much truth and with it, too much risk.
Look for me in old pages, hardcopied and bound
I'm as real as it gets when you're level with the ground,
I'm the long pause when your heart forgets how to dance,
I am my own name as big as giants afraid of ants.
He told me once of a secret he never had kept
For when you realize that you are forgetting your steps:
Our lives are in bags of chemicals and water
Trying not to leak and equate with the others.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Plate Tectonics, To Break the Spine

So give me those papercuts,
I lost the words the day before
But the ink sunk into the creases,
Once defined in imperfections
Forever summed in broken pieces.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Hidden Perspective

Looking at the world through glass and water,
The light was misrepresented, but I called it an answer.
She whispered you her beliefs like rusted iron
And pressed up against your thick skin.
I never read cards, but I felt your intentions,
Sunk in a shipyard, resting on your ambitions.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Digital Candlelight

Enough pictures could make a movie in the sound of silence,
Some comforting nostalgia before you emerged in your defiance.
He said, "Here are the rules, we'll be expecting your compliance."
But you prayed for each day the flaming judgment versus science.
A drop match struck a blinding spark called inspiration,
Its current was refreshing
Like a sinner clenching the profane,
It grounded every vein, and ignited your heartbeat's irrigation.

Cover Ups and Letters

Caught mid-swing, I struck out of the loop.
The dots in my eyes and the curls in the cue
Told me we had been here way too long.
There was only one sway to the song,
Which made it easier for the trees
With their fresh new leaves
And a wedding band in the form of a tire swing.
Your summer lay exposed on the calendar,
She was comfortable once
And wonderful enough,
But nobody would undress to challenge her.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Sharp Victory

My voices was afraid of the angelic heights
When you wanted to play the whiter keys.
I said you'd have to believe in a quieter me,
But my own shaking disbelief would vibrato just right.
In the highest frequencies of visible light,
You could let your muscles not hold you so tightly.
"Goodnight," you would tell your benevolent sky
Knowing those sheets would steady your flight.

Friday, April 8, 2011

If this city doesn't love me

I searched for the spare key under a sun-bleached welcome mat,
Papercut from that which emerged from a slim envelope
That was slipped from under my front door.
I blame it on the consequence of thermal expansion
That made those heated words so big, but just as heavy.
The statement was your pillow from the bed in your closet
So you just might see your night concluding to net losses.

Approximate Midnight Bomb

I could taste the fever under my tongue
That burned each sentence to death,
You walked over them precisely,
I lacked an inner ear understanding.
When the glass slipper shattered,
The heels had dug in deeper,
You were despondent with the pressure
On a deep wound or a trigger.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Senses Soft

I faded in about a quarter past nine
When tension strung the curtains back,
The redless black of the opening act.
Your retracted statement was a gate left open,
Wrought iron charred from indecision's ghost.
Someone shot out the back of your throat
And you cracked back in with that indirect quote.

It's Sowing Season!

Turn back to a slack rope,
See the oars dragging in the water,
The crewman leaned against the wall,
Mopheads standing in their buckets...
You haven't shaved in weeks.
Drift off a little more,
Roll the sails up like sleeves,
Go back to your dreams
Until it's time to believe.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Mutual Gatsby

I just wish I could repeat it like a favorite song.
I slept last night listening to nothing but sights
Like it was going put me somewhere I couldn't be,
It's just what made me feel most comfortable falling asleep.

...for the Classifieds

From one job to the next
I manage to keep myself impressed,
Every week there is a different number on the check.
Climb a ladder towards the sun,
If it gets too hot, then jump!
Don't hold your breath.
What you have is never all that you've got,
I am the optimistic tourist
I am just looking for a spot.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

R&A (BYK)

Take notes:
We are digital ghosts on separate coasts
And we talk to each other in prime numbers:
If you take a remainder and divide it through,
It won't get you any closer to the whole truth.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Devil In A Confirmation Dress

I judged you like it was the second time,
You trusted me like it was rightfully mine.
Yellow bird, yellow bird,
Why do you sing when you are never heard?
Your torn feathers were fixed with sea salt and glue,
Your bruises turned blue, and have made you look old.
My insides have been twisted even before you had visited,
And I'm sorry sometimes I just can't get it straight
To make it all go down easy, as if...
Those tear ducts weren't shut from the sleep in your eyes
From when you had to grow, and put your childhood to rest.
Wake up from your slumber, youth's not ready to die.
The cage has been opened, there's new air in your breast.

Missing Hands

Under house arrest we are chained to conscious birth,
The primal intent that makes us shoot first,
And answer questions later.
We ponder the still life still briefly alive
As the freshest memory we could keep
Before its taste dried up like stale wine,
Tabled like every idea that spills into my lap
And pulls me to the lip of my patient seat.
What if the edge were high enough
So that I would be safe to jump?
Would you be below or above?
Would you think that it were enough?

Thursday, March 31, 2011

From The Ivy Vines

The most uncertain war is the one we don't fight.
We send our lives in scores and letters,
Extracurriculars and jobs at night.
Hope comes packaged in clear tape
Tucked into an indistinguishable cardboard box,
But chance travels with no postage
In cargo planes and 5-axle diesel trucks.
The warlords are aged keymasters
With futures made behind rusty gates,
Who make our youth strip a dimension
With the intentions to write their fates.
They are blindfolded and called judges
Driving on an icy New England road,
They'll slide off the Cape of this college town state
If they know they won't catch a cold.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Candle Clock Bravery

Do you remember the words I slipped under the dinner table?
It was our communion that stained an old union sacrilegiously.
You were so unfamiliar with the taste of red wine,
But quickly acquired the its distinct consequence.
He had eyes for a feast, but a heart of bread, soup and iced water
Who once lived in a city on a hill, but now he stood on a mound,
He asked you to see the ruin and to hear the quieter sound.
But requests don't ferment like the rumors on a tangled vine
That now cradled fabled lovers too hospitable to time.
You have years since quit the book, but now you give me your devotion,
You see that fear deludes so well our rationale over emotions.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Quick and Heavy Swing

Your heels rolled on the marble like when you were a kid
Against the feeling of hard facts at face value
That baited your every breath.
This is how you see the way you see
When you find yourself suddenly staring at the ceiling,
Wondering who knew someone so headstrong
Could break their neck stumbling up on it.
And if this fall is groundbreaking,
I am a seismograph with no sense of direction,
But I'm okay with your shaky words and imperfections.
I am a polygraph with no sense of time,
But I'm okay with your lies, if you're alright with mine.

BuPo

A week's worth of experiments
Harbored the greatest compound of my existence,
You broke it down to the barest elements
And it built you up with the greatest elegance.
The chemist pretended that the chain never ended
But pretenses blemished it with kink that I lent.
However unstable, the carbon copy was in pen,
Vulnerable to each mistake, not to break, only to bend.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Loose Change Poet

I got closer to my baiter,
And I marched through the turnstiles
Towards the arteries buried under the city's skin.
Within we could either be blood cells or bugs,
But the nightlife was anemic
And the street lights weren't enough to see it.
I got closer to my slaver,
And I pushed past the yellow line
Towards the chain gears and tires
Pressed against the city's skin.
There were track marks for the sewage
But the storm drains made no difference,
I got closer to my savior,
But disallowed her my deliverance.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Now There Are Edges To Slip Off Of

They purposefully left us behind
So we could pass the time like pages in the wind,
Like some summer reminiscent.
The sea breeze sings incessantly,
Even the sun has incandescent needs.
With every window down
I could tell that we were free,
I felt the concrete screaming back at me.
This was my home,
The big city drone,
The suburbia seeds,
My growth and my peace.

Raspberry Sand

I still remember how my fingers did travel
However far south on a brightly colored map
And your veins pushed like rush hour
Weary blood cells, shirt and tie.
She made a firm fist with the tides in her hand
And her wet hair stained like raspberry sand.
Now I've been rained in on a prison with wheels,
Calmly quiet and cold in the crystal and steel.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

VisitoR

We make weapons of judgment with cones and with rods,
And satirical fodder that we drum off in snares.
We laugh and we love that we're alone and we're odd,
We don't know what they think, but we know we don't care.
I am the cynic that laughs at himself
I am the center you laugh at as well,
You are so simply the color of all light
You are what I am that keeps us alright.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Let's Be Friends

Fair skin in a dress devil black...
You were always for high contrast.
In the night, regrets are easier to hide
In the night, secrets are too far to come by,
But still, here I am speaking up to say hi.
Rationale was the cancer to your memory cells,
Hope's rocket combusted shortly after it propelled.
You are a white sports sedan,
Hydroplaning like an angel,
Diving off at angle,
Surviving, pearly eyed, and doing well.

Monday, March 21, 2011

a posthumous picture.

I am aspherical insobriety,
Dizzy from every perfect edge
Growing up,
Growing up
I've invested in
Stress fractures
And failure tests
For every hollow coin I spent.
The union is a shallow fallacy,
Common silence is common sense.

Conscious Lag

The darkness was divided into three separate sides:
Predawn, postdusk, and the ellipses of night.
Between the transitions, there was complete incoherence,
During which, the boy ran each thought through his mind,
He had his intentions well disguised in his bag
With a star in his pocket from the day's conscious lag,
But what was severe he had shrugged off as mild,
Now Father's caught up with his conscienceless child.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

M.G. C.E.T.

Turn the engine easy over,
It runs smooth along every edge
With yellow lights that cast over
The only way you've ever known home
That you could never take alone.
Stale air keeps the moment lingering
Like a blind man fingering every detail
Like a chemist better left speechless,
Their collision is heard as a hush.
Keeping it simple is keeping it safe
As the bumper implodes under instinct,
The inertial attraction that we've created,
A drought season's seeds that permeated.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Pure Moonlight

This is the closest I'll get to silent peace,
We cleared the east thousands of feet
Below a sea of loose atoms
To live life like loose flyers.
Always getting in trouble,
Always in bed after 2am,
Waking up to the feeling of hard ground
Against the heavy wheels of this plane.
Everywhere I look is a different destination
Any flight I book turns every timezone to the same.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Scott's Day

I could feel her fading before my eyes,
Dissolving in a bath of tears
While her tethered fears precipitated.
Her indigo shadows bled into needed sleep,
Her muscles contracted all the strength
She couldn't keep...
When it rains indoors
It stains and pours,
It holds up each finger,
Keeping score.

All Night

There was a man with a plan who couldn't swim,
So he built a bridge instead between two days,
It was planned on blue paper called the night sky
That would connect a sun reborn in the same place.
He worked with steady eyes focused on his blurring pride,
The intoxication from what he knows against what he thinks
For that stronger taste that sinks to the bottom of every drink.
He melted his own wax model when he had reach its moral extent
And dripped a drunken gradient, radiance burning at both ends.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Reference Frame

Tell my why you wake up worried about the air pressure
Like your decorated ears would pop
And your years of listening would leak,
Like today is the day the sky would drop
And you'd watch all your angels leave.
The world is a cage. And you, its sweet parakeet,
Just swing me like the bending tree
Free me like the falling leaves,
Just breathe me like the god you please.
Just need me like its lock and key.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Maps of Matter

The blindest map is our imminent collision,
The romantically-lit celestial ballroom
Which started as the condensed chalk
That was nature's prescription for separation anxiety.
It became the life of the deaf explorer
Who opened a door for each irrelevant knock claiming,
"We are the shepherd, we are the herd,
We are slaves and we are gods,
We are unspoken, we are unheard,
We are dust against all odds."

Moving Forward

You know, I've never been too good at school,
But I could spell out your articulated intentions
And I could read your bread-breaking lips' inventions.
So we make jokes about rearranging the alphabet,
Being sure to avoid the horrid cliché of vowels,
And I sometimes ask why
Your hands can turn as white as wine
And your cheeks as red as your polished name.
Remind me of your worry from waning the whims of age
Divide me into chapters so you can take me page by page.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Save Cameron

And all the scales in your head started tipping
Towards the lovely nothing you've held inside.
This heart throbs like a backwards joyride
That shatters the glass holding you from a clear path.
Your common theme is my near past,
In all its resizing deception.
It will miss you at the reception
But have pictures like it was there,
The color of his eyes
The texture of her hair,
You were a stone casket in a wooden coffin,
Holding plastic silverware.
The scale you left on the bathroom tile
Weighed your make-up meals molded of clay,
It took you and pushed you off the ground,
The springs revolted at your stay.

Friday, March 11, 2011

One-Armed Politics

Grade school attics hold static semantics,
Airy buffers that let our wet clothes breathe,
But the secret senate had said forget it
And dissolved in seamless sleep.
The re-summoned stuck like gum under a spell,
Words only chewed in a state of stagnation,
And all this talk about more often than not
Is just four quarters of a full rotation.

Claustrophobic Side View

My ears are still ringing from the words you said,
Or was it artist brushed up in my head?
Here is my water and here is my bread,
Stomach of butterflies, heart full of lead.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Make Your Definition In Anticipation

I could give you every word he has uttered
Like the loose change that makes these pockets heavy
That is frantically pushed into a meter solid red,
And you could collect it for something meaningful
Or scrap it for the cheap metal.
But the intrinsic value comes from the trials of the mouth,
The deformations of tongue and the wind bellowed out,
Gift wrapped old calendars, and planners post diem,
Watches running backwards to a meaning roundabout.
I present to you my past, every action carried out,
All time was never lost, just misplaced in what is now.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Lab-4 Play

Coincidence are roots conditionally planted
And shaken free from my own release,
These are the fruits of you waiting for me.
I only break the bitter skin,
But with the hint of something sweet
That sits on the tips of my teeth.
May you be swayed in the wind of my words
May the old oak creak with the songs of young birds.
But may I be weary of my courageous assertions
Though they have granted myself this conscious dreaming.
There was never a line to sign for assurance,
But I'm drafting my sleep for this hopeful endurance.

Getting to Know Murphy

Every accident comes with an according accent
That speaks of each incident as an angle of coincidence or fate,
The deflection of light as it shears on your face
Or the Coriolis explosion of a calendar's dates.
In a spiral of colors with dizzy fingers,
A presence lingers where every curl lost grip,
And your heavy words slipped into the uncertain sea
Dissolving the rules that would govern the key.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Struggle For Truth

Pride is the beast that lies on the couch
Who keeps the door and sleeps few hours,
Courage is the pair of red streaks the night devours
And defines the light in a field of steel towers.
Youth is the heart that tethers your aged wisdom
A chasm of fidelity, power and grace.
Truth is the battle in the confines of your blood,
The tickle in your throat, the tired look on your face.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Beyond Blood

It's warm enough for a heartbeat under my sheets,
So I tuck what I can keep under the sheets of a made bed,
Pillows pressed up against the bedposts
Like the tall ghosts of towering steel at the break of dawn.
There are clean pressed suits over dirty city streets,
There are a hundred thousand threads that bed between you and me
And catch the morning dew that freezes.
Every step on the concrete cracked like a chisel on diamond
And the look in your eyes was most precious, turned me to stone.
So I stood as still as a stoplight and put all of my time in
To watch sunlight collide into a newly made home.

Friday, March 4, 2011

It's all good in the hood.

Current thoughts are too rarely concrete
And too easily let the wolf in to keep me company.
You stay close to me like a pack of cigarettes,
And your regrets dissolve into hot smoke,
What's left from coming clean.
Pleasure me in nicotine
Be the justification for all of my sins.
I want to be the knife,
Sharp all around.
I want to get under your skin.

Housesitters and Homewreckers

Who would ever leave this world to ourselves?
My mouth was full of guilt
That dribbled from the corners of my lips
That I attempted to hide with a smile,
Cutting the tension with my grinding incisors.
The taste of freedom was masked with bile,
Words that would come back up from trial and error.
We said leave it to God for whenever he gets back.
His creation needs to be rewatered,
The universe is beginning to snap itself back.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Count On It

I tried to articulate with inept strokes,
But the horsehair vibrations
Turned into steel lovers with loud whispers.
I am but a conductor with wax on my fingers
And it's hard to feel anything beyond
Some numbing plastic feeling,
Some double-sided, burning candlestick,
Because you have to go through two zeros,
Before you can ever get to six.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Burning Your Earnings

The grandest projection will always be flat,
Like the soda that sat out in open air;
You only wanted its liveliness to breathe
Into the rest of the world,
I thought you were done with your drink,
Out to debate with Aristotle.
Your words have the complexity of double-sided tape,
So I took it for face value and set the money aside.
Pretty girls will all have their tiny watches,
But I promise you they will never have the time.

Monday, February 28, 2011

Ask The Host About The Next Show

Some mornings I feel the dealer taking his shift,
But there isn't really much that I do.
You've gotta earn it. Because right now,
You've only got one thing coming for you.
Reservations were left on the table,
But you thought it was an appetite to hold back.
If you take away the swine that left,
Well, you have nothing to count on.
You are a silent film that kept the sound on,
Because you thought you were ready,
But the reel spun on like a violent storm
And your head spun with bloody eddies.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

How the Day Smears Cross the Sky

And we waited for things to happen
At three times the normal speed,
Just to slow it down and repeat it.
We wondered how we could possibly keep it
Just the way it was.
So we scraped are knees on T.V. screens,
Running too close to a cathode reality,
But the skin never seemed to break
And the grass didn't even come to stain.
All the while, you were holding your breath
Like you were finally going under,
Like the chill that crawled up your spine
Was the counterpart of summer.
The corner was once much warmer
When the walls weren't afraid to touch,
But they get sharper once they're older
And the contact becomes too much.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Sticker

There were all sorts of levers and traps in your accented genuinity.
Every strap that held your paling wrists down
Hugged your skin against bone and swelled your hand,
Little red blood cells swirled like velvet goldfish
Breathing a purpose they didn't think twice to keep in mind.
With so much uncertainty in your fabrications and designs,
Your names were threaded with black sharpie lines,
And if I ever had a chance to fix it, I'd do everything the same.
If I ever wake up again, I'd ask you to repeat your name.

Flat Spin

Those cards made to perfect circles
Were laid to overcome certain hurdles,
But were never mine to play.
Yet there they were, displayed on the table
All under my name, the one you would say
When the dizzy night called upon it.
I cannot recall whether the fate was fixed
By a slopping pendulum that swung through time
Or if the odds just made it all seem odder
And uneven beats left one's teeth against another's,
But I've grown up playing the ebony keys,
And tonight I was singing something darker in between.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Hours, M.D.

We run the week along the perforation
And break the leaking bonds of sleep.
To slip into my most comfortable clothes
Is to drag the words against year ears,
Tired sarcasm from brass lips
With only as much power and presence
As the hollow instrument that bellows.
Wake up and say hello,
Shake up the still, now seemingly dead
From the skepticism of an even spread.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Lion Limbs

To conquer the tangles of relapse,
You pushed your tongue against the wall
And relaxed, soaking consonants and vowels.
You were prey to all your petty whims,
You hid your pride like lion limbs.
I took sips of sweet lemonade
And bathed in the clarity.
The citrus made my eyes red,
Evicted former levity.
You make every sentence long
For the sake of life's brevity.
Every angle is accelerating,
Concentric made your bed in me.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Social Reform (Base Theory)

Little creatures leave bubbles on the surface
That scatter my attention like infinite sands
Blurred by infinite salt within the imminent sea.
We're wearing our collared summertime clothes
And reenacting our favorite parts of the NT;
Our new skin plays with the water tension.
You read me like a book, I read your reviews...
Who knew a champion could sit so far away?
Coy with a baseball bat
And lashes that stuck together like gum.
If we're all going to hell
We might as well walk on the sun.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Set The Table With Tuning Forks

I like the way you give up on life
And how the text screen breaks out in color.
This is the way in code we speak,
Whose encryption is a description
Of how well those secrets will keep.
You were contained in rainbows
That broke on the shoreline,
You are the sun that drowns by night
You are the sound of shattered light.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

That 90's Punk Rock Feeling

You breathe your own bitter beat and you try to put the songs down,
But you realize you don't know what memory you're looking for.
The titles become lost possessions with their rights still intact
For the chorus that will live forever to never give the coda back.

Listening To Our Bad News

And I wave to our past with a severed left hand,
The ghost feeling when it gets caught on your shoulder.
Maybe it was kept inside my sleeve to keep me quiet
And stop the bleeding of words onto a number of media,
The paper that tapers off in an incomplete thought
Or the plastic pulled apart and distraught, but store-bought.
We're either cutting down hurried trees or drilling up buried oil,
But I'm okay with how the world burns at the end of the day,
Because I remember when you used to talk to me like a stranger
And I am clever enough to keep myself out of danger like so.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Bomb Dropper Mystery Video Screen

Count the curses stuck between your teeth
As hot air gushes out of your mouth.
Tonight, I corrupt my childhood with
The reason I don't know why I'd ever go so far.
Remember this is something you live with forever,
You'll feel surprised when your heart drops
And your numb hand is on the lever.
For something I put all my weight into,
I have never felt more heavy,
And when a glutton's stomach rumbles
It is the rubble coming down around me.
You speak well with your eyes closed
Your voice floats steadily through the wires,
The glass keeps me tethered to my misperception
That the deception comes from preaching to the choir.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Pacifists and Computational Tanks

When the day met you on the other side,
It was with warmth and a memory in storage.
The sky turned into a boundless vineyard
And the sun crushed grapes against your perfect skyline.
The cityscape began to remelt into the river the was reborn
As a promise you had sworn to yourself in sun-dried naïveté.
So you felt compelled to do it once again
Under the trusses of your fading consciousness.
You plucked your ribs apart, still somewhat in tune
And pulled that warmth in that never felt too soon.

Liquid Stressors

Swallowing keeps me speechless when my mouth isn't full
Hands cover my mouth as I argue with the atomic clock,
Waiting for it to divide my time peacefully,
But instead I am popping red opal fruits like pills.
I think I'm going for the sugar high,
But my wings are scrapping the icy sidewalk.
Since when were we expected to walk so imbalanced?
Since when was I suspect to have such kind of talents?
I'm just starry-eyed boy working off of dim moonlight
Who was told he could shine, but just never too bright.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Getting That Intuition

I've got an excuse in every pocket that keeps my hands dry.
Each breath for every word only seems to melt snow,
Your tongue's knots come untied from the most intimate speech
And your thread loses count as you unravel out of sleep.
You sink into the sweet objectification, an oil painting of fruits
More valuable than reality and the calamity that is truth.
I taste the sugar crusted over on the corners of my lips,
The frigid air could never shake me from your mercenary quips.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Unscathed

And everybody kept calm as the plane went down.
Cigarette butts were mashed on the oxygen bar
And an occupied room made magic with smoke and mirrors,
But little did I know that I wouldn't
An that there was no way to flush it out.
The sky was jammed with cotton like a pill tube
And our ears popped like the cylindrical nirvana
That kept us irrelevant to gravity's intentions.
A body that bathed in scentless lavender
Was all tied up with a symmetric bow,
For a gift best left ungiven.
A day that went by just comfortably fine.
A final descent that was inertially driven.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

It's okay if you're still searching.

Throwing down some heavy vignette,
We push inebriation to its darkest edges.
It fit like a sock and you rocked down the hall
Like your parents would never come home,
But now you're the own that has grown.
The toast clinks when you sink into glass
That makes a delicate spread of time's passage,
When you see what's been running around inside
What mixes to make the lightheaded stage.
The bed is under hot focused flares
And I'm igniting in my sheets.
I'm working for a dream,
Because don't wanna wake up to a nightmare,
And if I'm burning up, I'm just gonna climb higher.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Trailing Peace

We're coming up to the junction now,
Without a function of how fondness relates to freight.
I'm dragging two fingers to keep my weight down
While I'm going up to make sure all the doors are flush.
No, we don't want them to see what we've been hiding
Whose vibrations arouse a most precise collision,
That annihilate in silence with defiance, god-given.
A temporal temperance meets a deviation
Pushing clocks against a rail hurling steel at him.
Two fighting siblings and a mediator, respectively:
Optimism, Pessimism, and Realism.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Coupled Copies

There is no right when no one is left,
Hands down, you've been disarmed.
They've got a good balance,
Girls up front with upright backs.
I'm trying to avoid every question
But frankly, no one ever asked.
Instead we got past the full awkwardness
In three-fourth's time, with a cheap disco ball
And a stranger against my chest.
We never made a name to remember,
Not even a chance to tell each other our lies.
Our clips floated down from a gunslinger's song
A harmonica drawn to etch away a shallow night.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

The Water Bomb

The genesis lives on as the remnants of today,
The rain that comes in and washes more away.
When we met, it avoided every vein,
Contested by the blood invested in me
From bets that went beyond the meaning of my name.
But we are the filter between heaven and hell,
And we grow from splitting water and ejecting every shell.
Their exit makes an open wound between my lips,
A turbulent trip for a ghost to spend the evening
Whose deltas fracture rivers to dead leaves on a tree;
If this life is current, don't let it lose me to the sea.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Im

I don't remember how I got here.
Deep in conversation in the wading pools,
Scratching the surface from the rough edges
That kept me cautiously inside.
Say something to me again,
Speak your vocabulary in oscillations
That hug and confine your vocal range
As well as your lungs will let you,
Still trapped in their local cage.
I'm not one for commitment but
I'm glad that this happened before the ring.
The travesty of stacking paper
Is a house made all the same.
This is my carbon fascination
Committing completely to the game.

Remelted Iron Core

This throwback is being thrown back too far
For a boomerang that didn't ring
And knocked straight through the door,
The thunder to our reign.
When it comes down, we are all liquid
When it soaks through the soil,
I promise we'll be in deeper.
We'll be up against the door
Locked, warm, kept by our keeper.
It is our imprisoned leap
That makes the climb up so much steeper.


Monday, February 7, 2011

The Dampening System

A shower restarts the cycle,
A new agenda and a new outline
Mapped out on a foggy mirror
Overlapped on your own blurring projection
As it dissolves into steam.
The floor plan's irrelevance comes to light,
When you're pressed tightly on the ceiling,
Condensing all your feelings into drops
That fracture the
incandescence completely.
The cycle burns the indescribable color on your closed eyelids,
That exists, even when it comes back together in the end,
Warmth, blind guidance's reassurance,
Reaching out with sincerity,
But not necessarily seeking out a meaning.
This existence is only human, the fascination of human being.

Need To Deliver

The ground bends to come up to me,
Look at what it's giving up.
Her jaw dropped in accommodation
To the words that were spoken,
Accelerating realism and spectra
That only dissolved in the end.
This storm is a constant thunder
That shakes the amnesia
From the stakes put in the ground.
Tie me down to a parachute
And tuck me safely in the boat,
Perspective's tearing straight in half,
But the captain's mouthing, "Go."

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Saving Ephs

Of the things that went out the window when I walked out the door,
Some never change from what made them original.
The conditional state is traditional,
But I must say I've done the same to you.
And it's a thing you hate to see
When you find the things you buried in the backyard,
With prefixes that fixed them to the ground
When gravity didn't know what to do with them.
I'll make my dream and I'll take you with me,
But you have to promise not to fall asleep in the car.
My brother's blood was on my arm and it was still warm,
The salt chalked over from something he would die for.
I regret having left before he could catch his breath,
But this was something that could never be let go.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Quiet Black Ice

Take a stone tablet and you can build a society based on rules,
But you couldn't build a roof.
You couldn't give me proof,
Because your touch was no longer muscle memory,
Your spirit was a conjecture and your body was its projection.
Baby, it's exactly what you are.
Being reserved won't give you your protection
From those wide-sighted racketeers,
Those garbage can bangers narrowing truth down in your ears,
And facetiousness won't put the gavel in your hand,
This is not wisdom, it's getting older with a period at the end.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Perspective Shooter

It took years in powder smoke to find out
That six goes into pairs,
And you'll watch them break sequentially.
Don't pick your bullets off the ground.
As tempting as the shell games may be,
The revolver must serve its purpose
And move on.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

any more, any more | ever know, ever know

I heard one voice spill her sermons like a swollen sea,
A lullaby that smothered the sand repeatedly,
And tickled my toes like well buried weeds.
My guidance closed their eyes and fell asleep in genuflection
But I could still see your face in the marble's reflection
As I pressed my head against the pew,
Wondering when it would go through as you did with ease
When you as teased the most pleasant frequencies.
But no matter how many words filled my hands
Clasped tightly, these knees wouldn't unbuckle.
This condensation was the devil's kiss
Of my own, he wanted to bathe me.
That salt on my skin was the fresh water's sin
And your rivers and lakes wouldn't save me.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Wood Grain Bursting

How much can you push up against it?
Is it cracking under or clapping for your achievements?
This is the agreement between cartilage and shaky air.
I hope if this finds me, it won't leave me there,
Perusing between doors and walls unknown
That twist to sides in or out of windows.
Let's not look up and just walk through slow,
It's teasing to look back on splinters
In the winter, it's easy to catch a cold.
Have faith, see straight, motion sickness will fade,
We're bumming through the thickness, we're coming of age.

Monday, January 31, 2011

A Key And An Open Door

I walked out into the night,
There was a cold sting to meet my eyes.
I think God was erasing the world he made,
A perfectionist on an asymptotic slide.
I felt the ground below me give way,
But I wouldn't fall all the way down.
No, I couldn't fall all the way through.
I was stretching out my DNA
And walking up the double-helix case,
It was time to find what I was made of,
What I could break from pushing gas in neutral.
This might be the end, but it sure is damn beautiful.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Minor Fifteen

I've got this quiet window seat,
Let's make something out of it
I'm facing, giant faces meet,
Let's take nothing, proud of it.
You've got this style I can't defeat,
So I think I'll take a stand.
Six legs to four, it's up in the air now
And the wind is still invisible, visceral, amazing.
I follow your imprints in powder,
I measure the power in your step,
I am tripping. I am dripping with eyes glazed over,
Sun melting the snow to bring in new trees.
We're all in that paper chase.
A good spring will put green on that face, you'll see.

Of the things that were supposed to be done

We're getting into classics
We're getting into trouble
We're getting into double digits
Before the lights turn out,
And that's a promise I will put in the ring.
We worship the pyramids
But we turn them into diamonds,
Then regard smaller gods
Until it's all gone in communion.
I twice sunk a plastic ship
And held onto the table for stability,
The PNW and the SoCal swagger,
A holy dagger in the name of the trinity.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Lost On A Gateway Somewhere Out In Wisconsin.

We both stood on the dock, the devil's prongs
That decayed into your childhood proof.
It kept you safe until you let me pick at your heavy splinters
That night you willingly surrendered,
Fighting back only with the short breaths you had to give.
The moon stumbled over the water
Racing to get to my eyes with a most distant stare.
I would be out before the end,
Only kept awake by the pricks of pine.
I sunk my greatest wish to the bottom of the lake
That every new year doesn't come after December,
But if I could even remember,
If I could even remember...

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Tremolo, Treble Low

I was scared when your frame faded into soft flames
And was made into a bad trick played in good spirit.
You've gotten all scatterbrained
From when your life took too many turns.
We're burning rubber now
And you're getting high like a lit fuse riding shotgun;
I'm waiting for you to go off.
And we can all see how it finally got in
And what wounds it left when it bowed out.
Your heart pushed until there was nothing left
I burned what you gave me to keep on going,
But the last thing you said shook off and fell flat.
None even left to cry, only odd ends left untied.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Summer Days

The crust was burnt and bacteria grew,
We were retracing our steps in growth
Finding the world and exploiting its worth.
Our teeth sunk in like a swing of whiskey
And light fermented each sour mash memory,
Sun-drunk on a bench reeking the stench of youth
With feet planted in the ground that nibbled at us.
Our eyes turned mushroom cloudy
As the light came in for one more time,
Exhaling fading spores speaking towards future.
We had found unsteady footing in damned coincidence,
And danced away the summer with commanding dissonance.

Anniverity

When keystrokes became closed fists,
And even more tightly closed lips,
I couldn't give myself the space.
I wish I didn't keep tabs,
But you should have known,
This is how I compute.
What was emotionally consumed
Was made illogically moot
Was made the resilient distance,
A strain of virus and its proof.
Who would ever have thought?
When it was aptly made forgotten.
It would be safely placed poison,
No longer food, but won't go rotten.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Magadents

Let's have a contest.
I want to make you do nothing, nothing at all,
Right there is the magic, yes, nothing at all!
Your stress is a needle on a compass
That prods you until it goes right through you.
Like ghosts, it will do you in and pull you out,
Spilling your innards in the same old mundane cadence.
You say it like you mean it, but for all the wrong reasons,
"The trees aren't falling in a sequential order,
The qunitessiential color of this arbor is not right for this season."
I'll just give you a reason to stay true,
A reason to breathe when the leaves leave their hue,
So that you both can remember for as long as you can
Without ever having to keep count again.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Counting By Convection

Feel the cold press up against your skin
While subtle advances plow through snow,
Assertive and pinched with sensitive nerves
A heavy breath that steams away.
One develops a touch for this,
Two makes the connection for a second,
Third time's the charm that shines on
Four walls that hold it all together.
Of the five fingers on your hand,
I just want to hold all of them.
There was a hole in six,
Because I didn't want a bad seven
From the charm that made a clean break of fear,
The crinkled nose you put on when
Disinfectant only works on the mirror.

Swing Low, Sneak By Chariots

Tangle your feathers in bubbly,
Makes you lightheaded
Makes the coating fuzzy
So sparks can catch fire,
You're a phoenix going blind in the choir of the sun.
Never thought twice to contend,
But once was enough to singe the edges.
Oh yes, here we go again,
Seeing how well you go away.
You've been putting things in you
To bring something out,
But now you answer yes or no with diluted blood.
This is how you bow out,
With a stumble, sinking to lows,
Down the stairs when no one knows it.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

A-P/S-P

There was a lone wolf standing
On the structure of brotherhood
Whose silence was a compliance
That was most often misunderstood.
The moon sat terribly low,
Unbearably sick of the slick city air
That slid in and out of life,
Setting things down it would later take away.
Notice how each of these days is spent
Pressing a button for stillborn proof that
I'm just a light-chaser debasing out here,
Dying on the truth atop a snow covered roof.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Perspective Detective

Tilt-shift the world until it fits into your pocket,
Gets lost in the change and is tossed away with lint.
Or be the flint that saves the daylight, sunshine hero.
Your lips explode when the words want to be let go
Until you can't tell the difference between
The sweetest sincerity or sleep-crusted drool.
Fight the crime of digitized life
That goes by in properly tagged flashes.
The path of least resistance is irresistible,
But it gave you all of this distance between each step.
You couldn't hear my light through another silent night,
This time you need to fly, not fall asleep in safety nets.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

How It's Going To Be

Well, would you look at the time!
You're always halfway out the door
With a twisted neck, looking in
As if you missed something
On the storm you rode out.
It was a hurricane in a time frame
Once on the mantle by the present tree,
Now buried in the sandbox.
These hearts we have are landlocked,
We're always looking for what brand of
Light politics to which our talking ticks should adhere.
Hold the hands, flesh it out and listen,
The oceans will flood to you like the blood in your ears.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Treated Water

Skin goes bad as soon as he steps foot in,
Well there's no real good in sounding clean
If you're only going to talk dirty.
How the shoveled snow salts your shoes
How the mind's ceiling turned to gray from blue,
And the things you would do
If given the slightest opportunity.
Crystal eyes can drop like icicles
And shatter on your very figure,
Laying there like a drunk on cold concrete,
It's just a turn to the other side of a pillow,
Falling fast asleep into the darkest dreams.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Da Mayor Said To Mookie

Tell me that you know what's going on,
Tell that you're catching on much better than I am
Since the mind I made went out, not up.
Not a city that rose, but one that could grow a thorn.
There are things we'll always know on our own
That we will never tell one another
For the sake of selfish stability,
The shellfish and its humility.
Don't give me what I find most precious,
I just see reflections of gems in the water
That strangle the skin on old hands and cold feet.
If someone ever knew, it wouldn't be me.
A mouth opens to speak only "always" or "never"
If you only knew, if I only knew better.

Tunnel Vision

I lied and said it was my last one,
But I stole from a sick baby and an old man
At his request, and I did my best to improvise.
I followed family traditions
Keeping a safe distance behind the clock,
But sometimes it seemed we were so far
That it just stopped moving all together,
And then I could remember.
Openers are never closers
When we can still call it hinged.
This sunlight binge makes melatonin well
And we're coming up to older bridges now,
Concrete cracked and charred that never caught on fire.
Well enough, I couldn't hold it for you.
Clear the catch, whatever caught on when it tried,
Forget the things we kept in fear to the side.
The roof peeled off when the deepened shutter opened,
Overcautious of the light, for which it’s always hoping.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

2 Seat 1

Anxiously looking up every five seconds,
I see not the missing face,
Just one mildly misdirected.
Swirling in the cybernetic cycle,
It's a digital age, I can hold it like a bible.
Pull me in with your scripture,
Email and Facebook are reality's suture
And I hope to the Server that I will be saved.
My anticipatory friend is more of an imaginary date
Named in the fear of a cold seat pad.
Let's play the animal game:
Am I a giraffe or a prairie dog
Or am I just killing time?
Maybe all of the above,
Hoping each door swing is mine.
I keep using my manners so they think I'm not crazy,
My speech is not hazy, there is no hesitation.
Anything can be turned into a learning experience
Or just another source for a night's inspiration.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Golden

I'll be explicit when I'm with it,
I'm so nonchalant with arrogance
That I make it sound funny.
Mouth so stuffed full of fluff,
You've got me pushing out a chubby bunny.
Running quick, just as summer came home early.
Aluminum shines a dirty smirk
As it is crushed and hushed in a dark corner
Or in a black bag for the coroner.
Stiff as a carrot, we cut out the lights
For the single candle on a cake.
The sun's coming up and it's warming up to you
And you blow it all out, just like you're supposed to.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Four Old Numbers

Here is a toast to the ghost made
From burning busy bridges
And bruising our fruitful lives.
We wished the stems to wicks of candles,
But we vandalized our eye for youth.
Water clears the throat that spits fire,
The seeds we knew couldn't grow
To root through space and time,
Across highlited planners
And mapped out state lines.
The glass clinks as a long standing dial tone,
A sound that took a while,
But left a message on the home phone.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The Day Stella Died

From the stockroom to the standing room,
We were pulling her out to keep in the plug.
I asked her if she remembered when I pushed,
Said, "It was the only way to keep you close,
You shed your skin with a season's ending
And I couldn't pretend there was nothing
In between." Sips made periods in your speech,
A silence better left bleached in the sun.
When I left blacked out the week before,
I thought there would be warm light.
These colored squares are city blocks
In summer heat for one more time.

Search: "life" -imagination

In a stockroom I found potential,
A coat of dust and a window wall
With a view of eternal youth.
Only from this window could I see,
But when I sneezed it went away.
The shutter choked the light
In an instance glimpse, freshly trite.
Profanity is honesty's release,
And yes, I believe the bullshit
That comes out of my own mouth.
Please don't make me be the asshole,
Kid, you've got everything you need.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Wear Out Focus Ring

I woke up in a crasher's bed for a stranger
With a creak from a fuzzy heart overstuffed
That slipped under my ear through the night.
The sun dried my lids until they cracked open,
The brightening colors felt fresh, and the smell,
As old as the night before, but already spoiled.
It was a morning without an oil painting
And I laid as still as a portrait thinking:
Here's to the life that I couldn't lead.
It's a punch in the mouth, but at least I can bleed.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Pinwheel In A Puddle

She laid down with her right arm in the water
That was set in a cast and held up on stilts,
We wrote on it with metal, footsteps, and filaments.
Colored light in the water turned into oil
And a halo was put on the crescent moon
For the tides that pulled toward their final ascension.
We stood, as small as life, and made no intervention.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Ringing In A New Century

I said I wouldn't keep score,
But it's been about a twentieth.
Neither the wrinkles in the towers
In a wide pan of a burning city,
Nor the the bags that hang low
In the wind of dream chasers,
But the dull red light that pulsates
Alternating with a set of boxy zeroes.
A colon separates what it was
To what it is when the script is scrapped.
There are plot holes in these potholes,
She rolls over the asphalt like a farewell.
An actor worked and made me a friend,
It is just a campus forever again.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Chocolate Powder Milk

This intimacy is a foreign syndrome,
The power given in submission
That presses the chamber to thought.
He could never do more than hiss,
Though what is missed is not forgotten,
A fetus that grew into a hardened shell
From her insecurities in a fluid life.
There are directions independent
Of intentions that transcend a cycle,
And it is ourselves who are liable.
It is ourselves who scar our eyes
With viability in these trivialities.
The snake cradles the child
With its venom on reserve,
But turns away out of respect,
Its innocence still undisturbed.

Friday, January 7, 2011

A Grasp On Oil

My body is a time-smeared silhouette
Against everything I've learned to give up
Laid out in shadows and pricks of light.
But I could never forget it,
Mutual soft speak that meant nothing drastic,
Full and empty glasses lit up by festive plastic.
But the undoing of the bow on the present of past
Is a surprise wrapped in cellophane
That sits on a dresser adorned in sticky notes.
All with scribbled symbols that once had a meaning,
But you bent their arms and crosses
To believe something else they said.
This life has answers you will never understand,
Just look into a mirror, now explain what you can.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Stacked

It seems like everything is laminated
Menus, eggs, booth seats, and days,
But they shine like diamonds in interrogative light.
Here is a hand reaching out
Spilling over everything we can remember.
You see it! Don't you see it?
You got up for a second
And can't sit back down quite the same.
Warm spots have gone cold
And two hours have done nothing to the night
That shops before our foggy window.
The floor is covered in crusty sauces
And our lost time opened for answers,
We fight off our past and burn up its gas,
This city has never gone by any faster.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Calendars Become Cubicles

It felt like summer for a second
And everything was in its right place,
Though relative, but not absolute.
It was as brief as the storm surrounding
And a thief in its loss impending,
Reaching into my pockets of light
Running away in time
So that the subject loses focus.
I always wanted the corner with the window
For the comfort and the perspective,
But now my hands pat empty jackets
As I check the time and play detective.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Politics of Asking

If you jump in the water, it will feel like a flood
But it is far better than drawing your own blood
From fading pictures of sharp edges.
You've lived a legend grown too familiar to ledges,
Armed with an excuse for an exceptional view.
Take it in at shutter speed,
Stand still or else you're light will streak.
If you jump on the paper, you'll bleed right through
But there is nothing better than if you knew
How well these clots had once diffused.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Sunburst Mammalia

Kick your pretty shoes through the mud,
I could sit here forever taking air only to breathe.
Dull warmth pressed against me
And it shimmered in a western palette
Through the cleansing voice that rain could speak.
This laughter can stain everything we've come to love
And it wouldn't stop you from staring back
Looking for an answer in the deep azure.
The cage God put it in was meant to be expanded,
But it is left up to us to work it out in due time.
So put a crease on the last page of your favorite book,
You cannot forget how this one was going to end
When only the light of working fire made it through.
It burned a picture so tastefully overexposed
Of the flavor in each word skewed by your front gate:
"We don't make our opportunities, but we make our on fate."

Saturday, January 1, 2011

To Leave Unannounced (Brut Redux)

Always almost making mistakes,
But I assure you some get through.
If only some knew...
If only I could let someone know
There's a way to slow things down,
But things get so loud
That my ears could bleed,
But I don't need to care one bit;
I couldn't give it a meaning.
I never thought to speak of a resolution,
Honesty and emptiness had already filled
A solution to shitty verses,
Green glass and my ass on a cold curb,
Waiting for black chariot hearses.
My eyes brighten in embarrassment
As I slur out my repentance,
There are full bottles in the cold box
And I can't finish a single sentence.

[REMOVE SECTION]

Two-oh-double-once-again,
I'm counting my sins with hands full.
I had to catch up with my past at some point,
I've been taught too well how to say nice things.
I've learned so well how to take them
With my eyes closed and an open mouth.
Champagne lips and elastic clips
Champagne lips and elastic clips
This line tastes too familiar,
And I don't seem to care.
It's wearing down my tongue,
The bubbles pop,
You're not/you're there.