Hailstones

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

Crooked Landscapes

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

Far From Hope (Italy Red & White)

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

damnscent

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

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

Breathe.

Twilight Nightlight

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

Surprised Hands

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

For the Standards of Emotional Inertia

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

Frankness

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

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

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

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

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

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

People and Persons

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

Dreams Without Television

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

Srunk

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

Moving Towards Twilit Stars

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

XX-Dependent

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

Asymmetric Expression (Wind Down)

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

Good for you.

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

In Passing

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

Silverstein Physics

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

Aftershock Aftermath

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

Disaspora

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

Waiting in the Front Door

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

On Holiday

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

Silly Veins

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

Anniversary

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

Harvard-Weeks Loop

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

Peripheral Refractions

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

Effectively Nowhere

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

Dragon Light Rotary

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

A Fork Splitting Embers

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

Two Today, Plus One If You Count The Two Tomorrow

Unforgotten private beauty
Every other day,
Not including weekends.
We bent at our weakest points to sit,
To tell each other what's of it
That is our every day,
Connecting in every way
Until I can say that I know you well,
A hope that fills this crystal shell
That fell gracious in your light.

Ms. Bossa Nova

Hello there, dearest.
I know that you see clearest between
The two of us,
But is it true of us that truth enough is
Personalized eyes
Vocalized through a speed dial smile?
Direct connection to you from me,
To the one held equal among social authorities
That rain down from here to hell
And opened umbrellas that shared no faces,
That tie tight nooses with their laces.
You burned their gallows
When I earned your good graces,
Here's an indirect thank you
As I ad lib through dry spaces.

Hurting Game

Another round for the young woman while
This metal dancer twirls to the ground.
It's not that shocking from the cockpit
To land in a soft pit, to break the fall
Or break it all up in a series of
Selective.
Radio.
Channels.
A lonely whistle on this jacket is blown,
Hot Cross Buns in a monotone
For that church child now lost
In the roar of the choir's chorus undeniable.
Release and then think, no.
Release and believe, undesirable.
With all things considered but the other side,
In these arms, you will inevitably reside.

Figure it out!

I don't need lighted maps,
I've been more lost than this.
This is sleep paralysis
And I'm being constantly buried
Under cool dirt that feels heavy on my chest
Pushing out the words, digging myself out.
I'm alone on this one at best,
Besides the gravestones strumming
Some ungodly mess.
Direction and worth are still yet to be found
In the marrow of bones carelessly strewn about.
I'd shout "murder!" but courtesy cuts my voice short,
Emotional reinvestment pressed straight to court.

The Resurrection

I stand on this holy hill once more,
One last time before mine is up again
Explaining to an angel why this light has to bend:
It cannot break.
It takes to the winds and into the sky,
My own wings dampened, so I could not fly
But I could lie here with a lighter soul,
Tracing the mountain faces
And embracing a goal achieved.
These eyes have been opened
And they drank in a sea of sequins,
A dream sequence complete,
An intervention divine.
I'll learn backwards in time,
Walk forwards in step,
And dream now of what's mine.

Gerunning

Talking horror with murderers
Is talking too soon,
Walking the moon across a true sky
Until you're the one who turns blue
Holding your breath,
But running a mouth so dry.
I am every plane that flies
Over the horizon
And in it, it dies.
Predetermined like barcodes,
It is generic, all the same.
They scan the bars like prison guards
And place numbers for your name.
You counted me out,
The lions are caged and whipped and they shout.
You are nothing but skin, beneath and above,
Blind to the touch wearing fake leather gloves.
You gave me your lions, but you were the beast,
A confirmation as sure as this ticket back east.

See Sun

We hop the gate before 2a.m.
Pushing ourselves over
Pushing against the clock,
With the perfect getaway
In a white Astrovan, flying stellar.
You're young and impulsive,
Never say never.
We youth write songs about forgetting,
So that we would later remember it all.
The night's too dramatic,
But everything's magic
Before the sun's second call.

Hamilton Victory, Defeated at Gwynn

The drummer boy taps his drum
As hollow as the shells that
Run down this hill we protect
With only the hair on the backs of our necks
Singed by the bombs I set off with our flares.
Ironic, once again,
Congruent to what was made pretend.
Will appearances to fear the worst
Adjust before the bubbles burst?
Tell the drummer boy to keep the roll soft,
Either the ether calmed our meager troops
Or the Dealer has come to revoke our youth.

For A Day In Traffic (Transit[ion])

Here we go, the greatest rewrite.
Windows down so that he might
Catch something he would otherwise
Miss. What are you excited about,
Looking for?
You know these freeways like
The maps on your hand, the creases
And veins that stain a bland blue.
Still, you look at these signs and not know
What to do at the overpass. Exit.
A hair tie on my wrist checks my pulse
And pulls the wheel in the right direction,
A reflection without you, I left it.

For A Day To Go Right

I steal moments
Because they are all that can fit in my pockets,
So sock it to me.
This block once knew me as king,
But now I'm a thief being brief with my impact
And compact with my contact.
The getaway scene,
My hands hold car keys to dreams
And receipts that sing in case I forgot
The reasons why I wish I had stayed,
A life that is best lived in retrograde.

The View Is Always Better From Jesus Hill

This pretty, smog-filled city is mine:
The stopping past the limit line,
The steep green hills and power lines
Buzzing with the current that is now,
That is driving with the windows down,
Thriving on familiar sounds
That kept my feet on the ground
Until the ground left with me,
Ascending several thousand feet
So that New Years was a distant sound.
And somewhere in that smoggy sky,
The fireworks burned out of sight,
The muted booms stayed in their rooms
While I drove home through a quiet night.

Quiet Running Reflections

Braced legs pace in different directions
With their perfect imperfections
From a sober drunk in a serious situation
Who was intoxicated from being lost and jaded,
As he faded faster than written words could have saved.
Proper nouns are erased, the braces come off,
There's a spring in my run, I'm breaking this off.

LED Flight Board

The stars stop by for a drink
Light from the moon, the river and sink.
The lapping water is close to us
With thousands of waves,
It knows it’s us.
This picturesque investment
Manifested itself on an A320 commercial plane.
I’m going home now, but it won’t be the same.
I’m too young to grow this way,
But this runway is a Lite Brite,
And these bright lights dance and glow.

Kite Flyers

To define abbreviations would be rather unrefined
But IHTFP would have to mean the brighter side,
The lighter sky, the clouds lose grip and softly slide
Until the palette of today, are the colors in our faces
T-shirts, shorts, frisbees, and good graces.
They all trace back to when this all started
Youth in my heart and dreams in my head,
We’re renewed and rounding the bend again
Lending out luck and holding out hands
If you lucky enough you’ll hold her hand.
But for now, we’ll feel the warmth through our hair
The sweetness in life, sprinkles thrown in the air.

The Car Crash Dream

A neon orange violation violently rocks my head
That bangs like the rusted windshield pulled up and let go
To see what measly dollars would be pulled from my pockets
Well at least this time I didn’t forget to lock it.
There is a crowed across the street
The loudest ones are those who saw it
Or who couldn’t stomach spacious metal
Now crushed like a coke can,
One that you’d find up against the divide
Of the subway stairs in which it had pried.
A thousand cranes couldn’t be made
So a metal beast of one had to do.
And as it was removed
The crowd did crowd as gasps and murmurs ensued
Bloody metal and chipped paint,
Mauled, a man who stained the sidewalk and stairs.
I turned around because I couldn’t stare
So instead I prayed to every saint.
God bless, wake me up from this mess.

The Clearing

I've been reacquainted with the blue luminescence,
True to the memories of my cloudy adolescence.
Brighter streaks were from the ones that we made
With our own hands attached to arms that made wings.
I'll let go of these roses, as they should be left to grow.
That is the sound of spring, boy, welcome it on home.

Reduced To Chitin

The heavens rained bullets
So we took praying for a shot.
We got on our knees in our hydrated clothes,
Our morale bled like ink
From our no-postage hopes
That forever lived in our flak jackets.

Our family lines were brackets
On a tree being broken, branch by branch
To make the arrows that went
Straight through our hearts,
While the rest were used for the monotone letters
Sent to our loved ones to tear them apart.

We whispered heavy hymns
That condensed at the top,
Through our mouths, dry as chalk.
Drip,
Drop,
Rain
Stops.
The clots in the sky are hushed for the night
So we rush to the source to find out who is alright.
And the T.V. spoke of some special kind of war,
It said, "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."

Rain into the Ground: A Disappearing Act

A concluding sigh tied in silent thunder,
The ghost ship finally goes under.
These youthful times all spent
We wonder where it went;
It slips without a sound.
A disappearing act,
The rain into the
ground.

Head Cocked, Lovely Bangs

There's an absolute balance that throws us all off:
When two veins intertwine, another heart stops
Trying to save us. The vena cava seems unstable
And the aorta contorts and ties into knots
Becoming a complex web, incessantly vexed,
Of flight plans and ambitious dreams woven.
But here are some chords with no strings attached
Finally, a song with no one to match.
It rings peacefully with no one to disturb it,
But it wouldn't hurt to have someone to deserve it.

In The Spin of Every Wheel

Here is your support,
Under the pressure and holding the frame.
Anomalies I cannot explain
Contain the syringe that takes
This place in vain.
And the situation replays in my head
With some nameless face and me instead,
A broken smile and broken speech,
A broken voice, I cannot speak
What I heard being spoken.
All the soft S's and shaky O's
Foil this memory in the purest gold.
But with no sleep in my eyes, I get out of bed,
But I'm glad to see you so happy again.

Preveiling Winds

Lovely, just what might this be?
Street lights, bare trees, dead leaves,
This is the reason why I left.
I'm a crusader trading colors
To the East from the West.
It's been six months,
Two weeks and five days
Swelled my chest and sung
Hoping these lungs wouldn't fade away.
Lovely, above me, the feathers flow
And for once I'm okay with just being alone.

My First Words After Breakfast In Bed

I'm reminded of some
Beautiful memory that I never had.
A high contrast morning,
And I'm glad you're here to provide some clarity
For the disparity between last night and now,
The sincerity of a breath you let out
As you exhale through smiling teeth.
We burn our hands pulling these ropes
For the strokes of pleasure when it's cut.
I pulled up the sheets and you fell underneath,
I combed the whispers through your hair,
Now light as air, you fall asleep,
Just a couple more minutes
With our souls in a heap,
In tangles, so tender and mine.
It's been a while since December,
I just forget to remember
That forever is a very long time.

The Second Flyover

Your bravado is too grand to grant you permission to land.
The ignorant gavel in your belligerent hand
Is enough weight for me not to stand for this injustice.
It slams down to mask the sound of your smirk presented,
A blade brandished and serrated.
Whether false alarm or your call to arms,
I'd rather mine dropped so I will not pick up.
Today was simply beautiful.
There was no cloud spelling out rain,
But these words as clear as the sky
Are exactly why I shot down your plane.

Two-Tone Video Heart

I dodged a bullet and felt good about it,
The surly roundabouts
Were teeming with wet fuses,
But I would not be the useful fire
Only used to let it dry,
I would let the ringing linger for a while
Until enough was a enough
And false sparks were snuffed,
Confronted by smiling gun,
I would politely step aside.
And once in the clear I would fear nothing more.
She and I would Scream
From our own respective shorelines.
Having changed for the better,
Having changed for the fun,
We curled our fingers and straightened our thumbs,
Having sung in a way we had not in some time.

Lens Flare

For months it rained,
For months it snowed,
But not once did this river cease to flow.
I was always kept reassured
Of the assertive undercurrent,
Concurrent with little drops of souls
Trying not to get lost on their way back to sea.
Trying to find your way back into me.
They trickle with the roar of lions
And glimmer as a river of intangible diamonds,
Once underexposed due to lack of warm light,
And were cut and forgotten under heavy red light.
But lens flares in your hair are the sign of night's end;
Look up and look good, kid, the sun's up again!

Melted Sugar Wasp

In a spatial agreement
Between weekdays and ends,
There are no breaths to be held
Nor a need to pretend.
Breathing softly
Hands on the back,
But not behind the head.
Instead directions are reflections
From rivers, windows, all untold
To be tucked away in the folds of my brain.
The thought is a stain that I won't clean up
I missed the elevator twice,
But angels find their way up
Because I always new this life was heaven-sent.
It is nothing substantial,
But of substance nonetheless.

The Table of Rounds

An overlapping night
Rapping in second English,
Royalty abound in every suit.
Witches cast their spell
So we're possessed by their brew,
In possession of their brew.
It drips on our lapels,
But we're compelled to expel
The demon's blues,
Brought on by no-bed reds
And cloudy-day grays.
The condition for transition
Is intoxication or exhaustion,
It is picking your poison to flush out your toxins.

Changing Frames In Solid States

I heard it coming from a southern belle,
Her spring face suddenly turned so pale.
The temporary unique felt free in her hands
Touching the past with overcast jazz.
Your conscious responses are all out of sync
You're flushed in your cheeks
From the leaks in your head.
These fluid thoughts
Are cooled and stopped,
Solidified in state.
The weekend comes a little early
And in its cradling arms, you're safe.

Lights Out And Then On Again

Incessant dents beat through the night
And take the long way finding light.
Just one day? Sure, it's okay.
Just one more? Yeah, that's alright.
Another night?...Do I have a choice?
Each night I pull, pulls at my voice
Until I'm in silent disbelief.
After all I've been taught,
I've forgotten sleep.
These rings will keep me up tonight
As I hope the bell curve serves me right
Because nocturnal hell starts very soon
And I'll be spinning madly with the moon,
Crashing like the waves induced,
Like flashing hours of no use.
I'll write my wrongs from black to blue
As the color dissolves like visible moon.
The light of day has just begun...
I'll say good morning to the sun.
I'll pay my dues in money, time,
And reach for the stars, but then fall back in line.

Foothill and Volta

My yellow hoodie looks so good,
Shining brighter than the sun,
My wayfarer shades look hipster-hood
Keeping me hot like smoking guns.
But there's one shot I'll take
And it's sporting home attire,
The freshness coming out
Just as the temperature gets higher.
I felt a liar with my coats
To hold my warm thoughts close,
Draping all my sun-soaked summer dreams
In cold New England ghosts....
But here comes the sun!
Na-na-na-now,
Here comes that proud Los Angeles one,
Always looking west
When he's looking for some fun:
The beach,
The view,
When he comes home soon,
Oh, and masochistic runs!
He's found stability in the east
And has solved and resolved things,
He's noticed blossoms in friends' lives;
It's the coming wave of spring!

Mismatched Flight Plans

While this empire was built out of guilt and desire,
My brittle bones in a tepee were stolen, broken down,
A stick for a brick from shattered past
To shatter glass as a plane roars over
And I'm drowned by the intimidation's call,
Echoing off of invisible walls.
Pattered inhale and shaky lines,
Lying on a set struck under red curtain fire.
I'll just walk off the stage, I'm late for the flight.
(The conclusion trails off and fades into the night,
The name has been shortened and by now loses sight.)
So now it's time to count the reasons to come home:
One is to family that I can call my own...
And everyone else will pull back like rubber bands,
Trapped under wine corks and fermented bottle caps.
I'll just get on my knees, pray to God, and dig deep
Because I won't find a savior after thirty thousand feet.

Apex

I've been crumpling notes
Now their ghosts are fulfilled,
Their hauntings slid off of the cold window sill.
They now float with the flakes;
We can't correct mistakes once they're made,
But we can put bells in our hells
To make the worst words sound great.
Exercise heart and remark on its strength
All shot up with holes, but with no goal to sink.
The cardiac muscle was stretched,
Now relaxed since the past is caught up,
There's no need to look back.

Mr. 500

Whether our blocking is static
Or the facts start to change,
Every day's breath is one more to say:
The show must go on...so turn the page!
What a life so perfectly pitched and staged
With Murphy's law, a perfect storm,
And ending score perfectly played.
These lines aren't lies I'm paid to say
They're alternate spellings to
This name that I've made, comprised of
Christmas music on a cold night
A someone by your side,
A fire in your eyes.
Laying down a sweaty beat
To harmonies we keep,
Making a memory settle in deep.
Digging out courage to dig up the bones,
To make love not alone
To make this heart a home.
Oh, what a delight when these hands are full of light,
And I see it every month when these memories bind.
When picking these stars up from under the door,
And it opens to show me an ethereal shore
Where lapping waves and sandy pages
Make life's unbreakable bonds.
These Fields are real and where I belong,
I'm five-hundred strong, and longing for more.

Architecture in Life

The poor boy is just a score
Foiled over a tinny memory,
A light under the table
Vying for something Clark Gable would pull;
Instead I pull in my chair and sit delightedly.
A memory hindsided me when I looked away,
When I looked around without the grounds
To say anything.
I just sit back, relax, and relish their talk,
And compare their lives' cycles
And the patterns they plot:
The segregated groups with gossip complete,
The drama, the heartbreak, a high school repeat.

Sizzlers at the End of the Week

I was shook by sun,
Awoken from a slumber numbered low,
A solid dream tearing at the seams
With ghosts of what I needed know.
Itchy with integrals stuck in my hair
With genotypes, phenotypes,
See, no one is there to make a capital letter,
A dominance like the prominent annual weather.
And whether or not it was what I was seeking,
The literacy narratives were certainly speaking
Incessantly, restlessly, needless to say,
Working non-stop for this unconscious day.
Disconnected body and brain
That the rain short circuited,
Hot-churning all day.
Ease is that thing that I've almost forgotten,
Open-palmed, soothing balm
And a brain stem unknotted...
It's easy to forget all but what we will have
And you don't even know how I want it so bad.
The freedom to breathe,
The freedom to sleep,
The freedom to keep on the beat,
The freedom to see onwards into my dreams,
The freedom to freely be me.

A Slice of Advice from a Postal Local

"It's not all hookers and rock clubs and surfing!
You California hippie, don't "chill, bro, chill" me!"
It turns out, to churn out the most effective test,
Don't pregame, skip, and then postgame the rest.
We'll get over the humps when we're under the weather,
The results may vary, but we'll all go down together!

Relay: 2 (Purple)

Everything is in slow motion
As the commotion dissolves into a muffled mist,
In which a soothing consumes
To put a kiss in your hand.
Arms spread, your wingspan,
With feet only lightly touching soft grass
That is flush in the presence of elegant spring.
The rush of the air makes your joyous lungs
Sing out! Bring out the the life
That the the clouds tried to hide!
When the world's upside down, your eyes paint the sky
And your hair lays down in silk roots and branches
And rivers expansive...I dare not take a second glance,
Staring at the sun for another chance
To take a gander at a dream,
To break apart the art received.
It's more than life's colors, in which these eyes are caught,
It's dancing with imagining and playing with the thought.

Today, One Year Ago

I made a correction in your name,
It was the best I could do
And it was only for you.
Your little precious in an untidy meter
Summed up by alt. rock
And my short stint in theater.
The heater was on, we both felt a bit cold.
Life's grind against dreams
Had chipped off the gold,
So I said settle for the silver lining.
You can reach for the skies
When you have the right timing.
And I left it for you to put it in line,
Right, left, right,
Baby steps, one at a time.
I erected a vessel to get you out
And it remains in your name,
Even up until now.
So when the constants aren't constant
And the problem is human,
Just grab hold of the wheel,
Because you know what you're doing.

In Boston, Reppin' L.A.

A rush too much of what could go wrong,
I'm feeling skittish for these skits,
But I guess I couldn't quit now;
Just tell these brains to sit down.
So I sit down with a handful of glass bullets
I'm hit now with going through it,
Straight through the heart
And the measurement of time
I could not draw the line
Between finish and start.
Nostalgic, shameless
The stage, spotlight.
Ironic, painless
I'm whisked from the stars...
It was getting late and I was debreathed
For the Far East had found their way
On to the West Campus,
That stamps us the best house around,
I felt an accent coming on,
I felt my feet lose the ground.
Until 3.a.m., it was a Red Cup Social
Where we kicked it like fam,
Like we were supposed to.

Know What You're Missing

I'll make myself a name with a catchy subtitle,
Because up on that shelf
Of the things that just couldn't be helped,
The hooks are overrated,
And the storyline pining has gotten outdated.
Yeah, they're better off kept as ornaments
Since at the moment,
I've got my own pen scribbling,
Nibbling at the mind candy called change
Once I've dusted trusted places
And have these faces all arranged.
I'm surprised these books have kept their spines;
They're colorful, dirty, tattered,
And mine.
Torn and worn in, still all unsorted,
Like the state I was in, but then left in '09.
The mountains bowed and the waves waved goodbye.
At least I could have sworn...
California, I should have warned her,
But I've worn winter jackets and seen eastern shore,
Though I was born in her arms in a t-shirt and shorts.
Nevermore, not to worry, I'll be back in a month
And for the better, without a sweater,
The old me will be gone.
Tummy, tummy, pocket, pocket,
I've found my precious friends, now lock it.
So don't you bring me down,
With your lead heart that I'm dismissing.
Not long from now, I'll be back home,
So that you know just what you're missing.

The Allstate Guy Has Great Hands

It is smell of cigarettes and failed ambition
That puts my condition into perspective.
There is no prescription receptive of
These waters, the hotter they get.
That pass down my throat
Leaving a coat of regret.
Who is the envious one
When you look at the person to your left,
Where getting what they want
Is getting what they get?
Why is the person to your right
Living their dream on only the inside,
But have somehow convinced themselves
That they will die alright
From the satisfying sight of a gratifying end?
What are you doing looking at your shoes
Though comfortably fit,
Uncomfortably you?
If you ever saw anything,
You'd saw off the memory,
You'd dissolve all your enemies
And call out with no cause.
Underline all their flaws
With an underlying scowl
For their pride in the style
Of living on the prowl.
Yes, these bothering waters are a natural light,
It's the scent that we rent for the descent of the night.

The Deep Red Gem That Purifies Light

I'm bringing shovels, but never bricks,
I'm drawing sticks instead of straws,
Breaking my jaw trying to break even
Without ever breaking bread.
But every day I'm getting closer
To breaking my head
On this concrete realism,
The field on which I am played;
The flagrant foul was that I stayed.

Silly-Invented Turned Misdirected

As I was told, this is when it starts,
The pink-slippered twirl, tender tearing apart.
Putting sheets over dusty bones come to rest
To be ruffled, hear the muffles of
The other life coming next.
She makes spirals in wrinkles,
Her ankles, the axis spins out of control.
Twisted revealed
Shortly after he healed,
The same crooked mirrors
Just a slightly difference face.
The same crooked stories
To run circles in a race
Where you erase the tracks you left before,
And the lactic acid, you ask for more.
Abhor the cycle, but stay in line
You're a ticking bomb, going off every time.
Because you were never really on it
And it was never really known,
So with that same dusty sheet
You gather up your bones.
It's condescension up a hill
And renown around the bend,
With abstract thoughts in concrete boxes
And the foxes smoked out of the den.
You've got to blur the details
To clearly see the circle's end:
So long to the best one,
It's on to the next one
To happen all over again.

Recursive Mechanics

Calm your steps, pace your breath-
I c-an't, I ca-n't, I can-'t, I c-an't.
Give me space, but I need air
So that your kryptonite kite
Can take flight with my breath,
Wishing you the best
While cursing under my breath.
Pulled back into orbit,
Fooled me, you did!
Playing to weaknesses,
Snapping to grid.
So, quantizing hope in the direction of sun,
I am counting these squares in reverse,
Back to one.

Are You a Friend of Pavlov's?

It's all a performance,
Steady your chest.
Your ribs are shaking out of tune
Pattering lungs, you're turning blue,
Itching with twisting of adopted mannerisms,
I scratch at them like fleas.
I plead that you won't kill me
With my own name, please.
Nonetheless, I asses the losses:
Shitty paint with shiny gloss,
And hardly enough time to let the coat dry.
It's a reservoir played pretend,
At least by then, who would choose this?
She said, "You must be a friend,
And you can, call me clueless!"

Baby Face

Remember that dream you had
When this time, for once, you weren’t so mad,
Where you met her again
To make the same mistakes again?
Let’s be vague together
As we share this stage together,
Since it’s so hard to silence the beast
And despite these cracking guns,
We are so far from peace.
The iron of your barrel,
My bayonet's teeth,
The irony in your idol that would soon set you free,
That would not let me be,
That pulled us apart when we were just getting there,
Because we are too old to dream and too young to care.

In the Theme of Belligerence

I wish I could rhyme
As if I were drawing nines,
But I'm sawing off any recollection
Of the collection of thoughts for memory.
And this lying wouldn't mean anything
As I let them lay down the beat
Before the blackened crystal sea,
And rather meet them festive after.
Let the smiles mix with the laughter,
The pool room and the chapter,
A good friend and the older ones,
More fun with less disaster!

Magnitude

Take this one in slowly...
Now let it out the same.
The LCD is tame,
You remember your own name!
Now stop, close your eyes;
See the color on the inside.
Greater than the orange
The red,
The pink,
The veins that drain.
Your heart, once a sink
In which the love poured.
Looking back or looking forward
Frankly, I don't know
The sun is setting
The sun is rising,
My mind's horizon glows.

An Independent, Crooked Smile

Without demand, an explanation
And soft vibrations throughout your hand.
You don't need to read your laces
With nervous spaces in shaky shouts.
You can leave your compensation
The sensation will come about eventually.
So wandering words can come to rest,
You can brush them off your heavy chest.
Words more sensitive than the dust in your eyes;
Breathe, my friend, there's one more in your life.

Dreamscape '08

In the traffic-lit 2 a.m.
A good winter in heart with the other in hand
Denotes tenacity, audacity from many moments past,
Scotch tape intoxicated, feeling intact.
The taste of the waste blinds with echoing walls,
I trace with this touch the crossfades on your palm,
The scent of my thoughts draws from two years back,
And thus, tea tree leaves preserve footsteps in sand.

Anticipation, Here I Come!

Drawing conclusions with thoughts full of lead,
Heavy thoughts in my head,
Creates the hazardous dread of falling down hard
So they are carefully decorated with my guard.
An ode too early to earlier on,
A friendly unforgiven, just given the arms.
The harm in this armistice
Is betting an incomplete table setting,
Washington, lost in a gray bedding.
Tentative bets set in summer's June,
Because you cannot see a brand new moon.

Social Lubricant

I had been digging my own grave,
Adjusting my bow tie,
Telling myself I'd been brave,
But a spark was enough
So I stood up.
A thousand emails cleared and a shaved beard,
Some sort of inherent power.
I'll shower myself with delusions for a while
Top-shelf-picking in an endless, nameless aisle.
Sticky situations won't make joints looser,
But a goop, goop, goober,
Something really super
Will sooner amount to something more
Than a poem and a picture door.

Response

Retracing days,
Facing forward
In a backwards train.
The slush of steel wheels on track
Addressed with your name,
Pushing air through pursed lips
Rushing life with nothing to grip.

Poor Satellite Talk

Gentle streaks of orange

On indigo lavender,

I circle the date as I sit on my calendar

Trying to make sure

Despite a design made by nature

That these days won't float away.

The process is cold,

But it won't snow today.

Let's peel off these sheets like bandages

And try to find the advantages

Of getting out of bed,

Full of bed bugs, hugs,

And retrospect lead.

Who knows how I will deal,

But it's time I've fully healed.

Little All-Stars

I am listening to
Two,
I am listening too
To,
The silent hum of golden lights
Looking backwards,
Sleeping alright
All tight in a bundle
Fighting the cold with an undersized throw.
Huddled, I muddle some words I don't know,
Trying not to show the softest spots
That I could never get rid of.
Black and red with a cigar
A younger dead when you're born
From the stars.
In darkness, discussing life's value in motion,
Taking the absolute value of emotion.

A Sense of Propriety

The magic triangle in the bottom left corner,
Structurally sound as it stands,
It grants you entrance to an escape.
Intoxicated peace,
Cards, cups and pockets
Electricity without sockets.
Los Angeles is an ocean of soft fire
And I lightly pinch the spark
That dances on this one wire.
A single tingle ascends my arm
A little more startle,
A little less harm,
A little less charm,
That now dangles from your phone.
Smoke dances on the drapes
Names are thrown,
Some stick like tape.
Others slip like ice
And swirl back like the deepest eyes
Dressed up or buttoned down,
This is a joyous, boisterous sound.

The Components of Us

And this phrase overused
Fades into a spacious blue,
Sky-cracking harmonies
Outdated words fall harmlessly,
Bouncing off strings with a dinky little ring.
Oh God, I'm singing so loud with a smile on my face!
Filled with warm shaking, things I can't replace.
The direct object has been subjected to this:
It's time to close this chapter, kid.

Transition-Free

It's funny how things are always different once you get there,
Different in how you felt or,
Different in what you expected.
You ask yourself, "Who's protected?"
But some things must go
Unpreventable,
Unpredictable,
Unprecedented.
A sudden jump into sullen waters,
A wooden thought knocked
Before fading into fodder.
Good luck, you masochistic hopeless romantic,
It's time to do the maths and the sciences,
Don't panic!

Saigon Guido Cash

The smoke of cigars sets on your tux.
The sucks and blows in an elegant drag
Form the tag line for "class" and we are enough.
We are the trust in the bonds that we make
We are too much with wine glasses that break,
Raspy voices, hasty choices,
We're all out of tune,
And we won't be leaving too soon.
Swooned for like a sex fiend
Swaying, sipping like a sailor,
Savor this fraternal love,
A gentleman's true gentleman's club.

Twilight

A sign perched against the dawn-graced window:
Dead end, fall asleep...this is all pretend.
Bend the wire, press repeat with pistons on fire.
My body is weak from holding my own
You've stood stubborn ground
Meanwhile, I have grown.
Forgotten like shots, forgiven if not,
Kindly, no room for many other thoughts.

One Wish

There is always truth in accidents made.
Have a great night, I hope that you're safe.

Muses of Horror: This Temporary Life

The effort is always worth the binder,
The assurance that I'll always find her:

The silent workings of before
The colored mountains and the shore
The summer parties pooled in cars
The fires, blankets and the stars
The movie on the TV screen
The warmth under a shedding sheet
The freshness finally coming out
The sighs and smiles and eager shouts
The magnet of my every word
The Brand New night kept undisturbed
The running over, mine was better
The scent that's left on scarf and sweater
The proper noun for your escape
The stains I left despite a plate
The car that pushed for hands to hold
The alcohol and matching rose
The fallen petals mixed in with tears
The very depth of darkest fears
The bandage over heavy wounds
The living backwards before June
The catapult that brought it back
The righteousness and sneak attack
The settlement of déjà vu
The brittle riddle, me and you
The snowflakes falling in the dark
The truth enthralling, drawing, stark
The rope that's given hidden slack
The unknown guest who taunts me back
The reiteration, louder this time
The new moon whispers in my eyes
The burning yearn sufficed, now stable
The picture perfect on my table
The broken leg that tried to hide
The falling break on other side
The carpenters: two, the credit of one
The blinding in the brightest sun
The sudden tug of shoddy rug
The certainty of metal slugs
The cold that branches from the spot
The hypocrisy of lessons taught
The intentions more than actions made
The latest nights waiting for age
The displacement of pace and trust
The best that's just not good enough.

The purple side,
The catfish pie,
And all the hazards of love,
All that I fear to mention here,
And all of the above.

After Sleep, Before The Sun

I let my door shut with no guts to go lock it
With the best comfort found in the lint of my pockets,
A self-preserved warmth that is worn bitter sweet.
Come on, baby boy, just go back to sleep...

Subtle Unrest

The quake of what was misunderstood,
Aftershook in the nooks in which it settled
With the permanent carvings of sharp metal
On soft fragrant wood.
These clocks go round,
The story's retold.
And crashes with the dishes
And splashes ice cold.

Inhale quick and pause stiff,
Eyes wide ajar.
Names, dates and places turn into scar tissue.
They are issued unorderly on our porcelain story
In faint and dark cracks in its beauty and glory
That is not coming back.
They drowned in clay oceans;
Unevenly stacked.

I'm burnt on the beacon that guides our ship
While watching your name by a tiny blip.
Your Morse is coarse and of course you know.
You failed your own course to lecture in show.
Never a care to walk on your tips
And I'm carefully aware of our public quips.

So okay, to my dismay, with a quick moving on.
Excitement in your eyes,
Pride in your stride,
Unsettled by the meddling
In the back of your mind.
And rather, you are flattered
And your swagger, still strong.
There are cards I could play,
But I let you go on.

Instead,
I built a house
Called Home,
But felt,
In only me,
In my mind's nest,
Though lonely,
At very best.
I'm falling,
I'm falling!
But doing my best.

in (love)

We do not need a god to fear, because we will destroy ourselves in the end, and the biggest mistake that we will ever make is having fallen in love again.

Fitting Fire, Fitting Rain

Wherever you are, the world is still real.
Lips, hands, intentions are not set apart
And I can still feel a double-edged sword
Cut right through my heels.
Intentions are sharp and snap tensions in nerve,
I cannot run and you don't deserve
The peace, that you took as I fell on my knees.
Intentions invented with no blame on me.
I am not to blame,
Except for the fakest smile I've ever made.
You'd be crazy to think I'm alright,
And by woe,
You should know from a last summer's night.
Everything hurts,
And your epic redemption
Just made all things worse.
I can't find the rationale this time around.
Where are my angels?
Stuck on the ground,
Playing pretend,
While I'm watching great things come to an end.

Counting Crows In The Early Morning

One tear goes to an unaltered life,
But mix me three heavy ones this time.
This is the first time I've used this right.
I couldn't tell you what my mind has concocted
Screaming "M.A.D." with every gun cocked.
Keeping,
Keeping everything locked
But leaving everything sheltered and stocked.
Puddles aren't deep, but still you're surprised,
You're aware of the color in only your eyes.
Guilt and Pride,
What a concept to ever get right...
And I still don't know how I'll fall asleep tonight.

8:58

It was throwing my morals against the wall
I cannot resist the call of pride,
Of seeing how quickly you can hide
A monster.
Keep it inside,
Keep it in time,
Keep it or weep as you get pushed aside.
But frankly, it ain't me,
I'm no one thirty-five,
But a full pound in one night
In two seconds under nine.

The Center of the Universe

A low moon scraped against haunting trees
With dead finger tips grasping.
Our eyes were gasping for light
As we walked through the cemetery at night,
Searching for a ghost with no grave,
Wondering if ourselves could be saved.
But there is only sound as a result
Of self-afflicted blindness
And knees on the ground.
We are driving now,
Blurred light from the dash
And the ash-colored pavement
Press against my retinas.
The bent antenna puts static in the songs,
And I can still feel their bodies,
Limply hanging on.

New Face

Man triumphs in synthetic,
Prophetic in shallow eyes
Who want permanent disguises
So we don't know whose lie is whose.
And different faces
Are preceded by traces
Of medical marker and polished shoes.
You can borrow the sorrow I lend
When self-portraits past
Replace mirrored glass
And expressed emotion is only pretend,
Because you lost yours for a couple cents.
They are gods, but only in a human sense,
Molding plastic,
Holding souls,
Then letting go,
She's getting old.

Sleepless

Sometimes I think that I'm dreaming in reverse
And I'm trying to pull myself out of the dirt.
Asking the grass for the skin on my bones
Shaking the worms out to find a new home.
Hollow eyes wide open,
Hoping to find who tore my soul and body apart.
But a sudden itch behind my ear,
Reveals a memory I held so dearly,
Clearly one of the few intact.
In fact, it's you who had my heart.
Wrapped in gold foil,
A promise's encasing
And I suddenly lost my need for chasing.
With my bones all disjointed,
I slipped back in lawn sheets,
My heart left unstartled,
No longer mine to keep.
Its pace in my chest would surely make it melt
Like your sweetness, a chocolate
With richness unbound.
The sound safely harboring your rhythmed responses,
A radio frequency with only your song.
Because sometimes it seems like you're only listening
But I'm content, in the end
You are what I've been missing.

Rainy Day Hair

I'm breaking the rules a little bit
Because who knows if these pumps will ever quit
Crossing these fault lines,
Dumping their sop lines,
That you loved to hate
And I loved to create
This picture pitched by a pitcher of smiles
Keeping connections across thousands of miles,
Over mountains and streams
And both of our screens.
I hope you don't mind if we stay for a while,
Cozy while we doze off in our separate beds
With our separate hearts in our separate heads
Stringing together through fingers and thumbs
Patiently waiting for time to just come...

Relay: 1

Possibility is a collection
Of one-address stamps
And planting great trees
With only one branch.
Growing rings upon rings
Of ink blotches,
Hot chocolate,
And notes for three rings.
Playing courier-catch,
Consistently matched,
With what our minds hatch
And what our hearts sing.
Stability is eager with nothing to write
But with potential,
Credentials for hope in my eyes.
It's mixed in with sleep,
Beauty once it's in sight,
And hands full of prayers
For peace through the night.

A New Winter Coat

In quiet nights it whispers on,
Trying to find just where it belongs.
Tapping on windows,
Tangled in hair,
Or laughing, just happy
With floating in air.
Caressing the wind
With unique ice stitches.
It softly sits on my shoulder
Giving me kisses,
But making me colder.
Though once I've found a shelter in light,
It softly melts and says goodnight.
Your entire life becomes where you go
When you are fresh snow of a new winter coat.

Minutes Before It Matters

I've checked my sheets
For what I've done wrong
Retracing sleep paces,
One step by one.
There's no dirt in my step,
No blood on my hands,
So who dare puts
Broken glass in my sand?
A coloring book to the colorblind
Will always be in black and white.
I'm dreaming on dominoes,
Consecutive nights,
Trying to tuck these covers in tight.

Stepping Into Puddles

Your words could have been
The cup in my hands
Quick, without the chase
The worst kind of robber.
Disguised ever so well,
But with no demands to tell.
The wind has a voice
And you are its breath,
To go and to come
And become nothing less.

Imagining Everyday

Rinse, repeat,
My body is clean.
A smile of glee is slapped on my face,
Hard enough to wake up
And pick up the pace...
I pick up the vase,
A sea of crystals on the ground
I let out a lazy, mortal sound.
We're always running towards the horizon,
You bet, set to get whatever our eye's on.
Breaking through the tape
Your mind's video plays everyday,
A new ground is paved.
Your senses are saved for now.
You can open your eyes
When you've shown me how you've changed,
When thought is then bought and put into play.

The Direction of Perfection

It started with an idea,
Pushed by the inertia
Of a utopia lived vicariously.
A future for something greater than me,
But all-inclusive as well
Building a ladder to climb out of this hell.
The mind's glistening haze
Gets richer and fatter,
A fair trade.
A day ablaze in a lightning daze,
Routine as seen on future's face:
Infinite steps.
It's the journey that makes it
And takes me to rest.

Because Consciousness Is Not Permanent

A prefix overused
For twisting stubborn knobs
That twist back or not at all,
If never used
Or pursued in falling.
Calling out the colors
That painted my emotions
Red and green for stopping motions,
Painting pictures incomplete
Reminding of the obsolete.
Complete the circle one more time
The conscious choice was never mine,
Surface up when best dressed down
The sound of striking, venom strong.
And with my poisoned mental lungs
I'll say I miss it all.
I said I miss it all.

The Gravity, Regardless...

Will I grow gray
Spending my days
Knocking on their door,
Screaming things they know
Rain or snow
Rain or snow,
Coming fast towards a red light,
As blind as justice
As blind as this trust is
To break my own benediction
And work with what I've got,
As closeness gives us friction
And makes these waters hot?

Needing Symmetry To Leave

We're scaring the darkness out of the night,
Out with our light,
The fire in our hearts
When we burn this pure oxygen
So we won't get us lost again.
Hello, cutesy smile,
Salutations, sunshine!
You're looking alright...
Congratulations on life.

Stepping Backwards, Then Turning to Face the Night.

I've done this too many times before.
A setting sun's lashes put eyes to the floor.
Her gravity pulls me away
From a door I've once taken
That pushes to stay shut.
"Come back!" said the crests,
Crashing white with the fright
Of accepting the flight that I'll inevitably take.
My thumbs are the breakers
On which her tears can break,
As the waning waves comb her hair made of sand
After I reread chapters, a pen in my hand.

Linked!

There's fog on the rear window,
Only frosted light shines through.
This is our truth.
This is our youth buckling,
We are the sucklings of maturity
Squeezing the purity out of
The prick on a finger.
We sucked the poison
Right out of the stinger
And I thank God that
You woke up this morning.
So in this fit of emotion,
We make the good and bad commotion,
And the notion is that
We'll both land on our backs,
I look in your eyes and find an explosion.

Mother is going to take care of you...

My day doesn't exist without you,
According to you.
Child, I'm too old to play.
Your head spins
With the world you've made around it,
Like how you hurl yourself
Carelessly from the swings.
Oh, the thoughts that go on
When you don't hear a thing.
So I'm putting razorblades
At the bottom of the slide
To cut to the chase.
There are things I can't hide
That you can't seem to find.

Tentative Roof

Here we are again,
I, attentive, quiet,
Enjoying the riot of a sword fight between
Stainless steel and porcelain.
Your mouth sparkles with flint
As the pockets in your eyes
Get cluttered with lint.
Meanwhile, a cloud hisses
As it fills in the air,
Challenged by the charge
Of the static in your hair.
A beauty retained when we are alone,
But gone with a wick licking over the stove.

Trudy Without A Sense of Direction

You should be the last
To tell me how I should hold glass.
Are there just a pair of black gloves in the front seat?
I know you've been good at following directions,
But somehow, it's so hard
For you to read these signs.
You have the light,
But I don't want the stage.
Just remember who was turning the page
In the dark, with a flashlight
A something you held tight.
When it first hits your eyes
It gives a dull sting.
You follow,
I swallow,
Remembering things...

Right Eye Twitch

I fought them and lost.
I don't know who you think I am,
Because I'm no fucking superman.

When Creaky Doors Fade To Tacky Walls

After--far too--much deliberation,
Liberation?
Yes.
Some sort of willful resignation
(What a concept-shunned conception)
But I'll keep it brief,
As if you were worth more...
I hope you've found your attention
Whore!

The Most Meaningful Dullness

First you starve out the riches
Then try out the gifts,
Notice how they shift in their seats.
Show this to every single past me
With a smirk on your face,
Because every retraced line
Can always erase,
Like reading these palms upside down
And making the name an improper noun.

Agoraphobia

For all I'm concerned,
We are crowded by ghosts.
We host them and boast
Of the prettiest roses
That we march down the streets,
A fragrant infantry,
Armed with pedals and thorns
That drive in the foreign-born.
They party before parting,
Making trash while getting trashed.
And then it all passes
Before I have mine to say
That traffic and roadblocks are
Not making my day.
...Turn before it closes!
Thanks, Tournament of Roses...

A Decade So Rich That It Spoiled

As if he would ever change
As if he'd be in range
To pick up the signal
That signified his defiance.
Unaware of his share
Of flaunting noncompliance.
He never learned how to ask
For he always received,
A decade betrayed
From some jealousy seeds.

Roslyn In My Ears

Anticipated stream, a gleam from
The brightest I've ever seen a deep crystal blue
After washing away every single untruth.
A moonlight boomerang,
It's coming back again.
It's loving back again,
Losing the crisis
Of sitting quietly in a chair,
Seeing this sight
Breathing this light
Drinking this air, so thick
Of something that has always been here.
She is softly swaying back and forth
Humming the strum that makes me think,
This will work.

This Time Around

I feel the pressure beneath my lids
Street lights by a booth give
Soft lights,
Soft seats
Softer smile.
I have truly found something.
But I should be a lawyer,
Adult time at 5am
With a cold glass of water
And everything is okay.
Patterned sips
For every quip,
Cleaning up where I had slipped,
But some of me fell straight to hell
To justify what I do so well.

The Mines In My Backyard Are Mine

With the greenest grass on top
We can stop the most obvious appearances.
But are they low enough for clearance?
I fear that they'll fall to the floor
In fits of laughter,
Though I insist
That after all of this blows over
Like the wisps of hair
That I try to comb over,
They'll just be older kids.
They're all just that today
And no matter how hard they try,
We could never let them out to play.

Gently Rock the Cradle

Long stares take you one more up
The flight gives its light
When you can finally trust
Yourself.
But right now,
You're bounded to hell,
Given buckets of water
Of youth from a well...
But I never asked, if you couldn't tell.
Because I can tell for you
These lines, designed by you
Before you recycled,
Recentered,
Relocked,
Everything is rewound,
The winding sound stops.
Something here isn't mine,
But I take it all the same,
Filling holes with the goals
I haven't yet defined.

Precious Precocious

You're scaring yourself with
Hypothetical monsters.
They scheme in your closest
And dress you up with
Every fashionable frightening.
Your Sunday's best is your funeral
And you die with the weight
Of all that you wear.
It's hard to keep your hands
So tightly clasped together
When you've become this self-aware.

49 Minutes Later...

We made our greatest wishes
In our secret, silent ways
Some vague for some complacency
When faced with space to say,
I'm abused from excess truth
But I would do it anyway,
So we wait a little longer
Until the soft lights fade away.

I Would've Sent You Flowers

You have to be out here for something
Everyone is out here for someone
Let our red ribbons go undone
Let it slip so smoothly
So soothingly
Against your hair
Against your skin.
It feels cool and refreshing.
But it's still the same,
Faces stay fixed
Once fit in a frame. Guilty of what
You didn't want to be blamed for.
The jury's quietly hung because I'm sure
Your name is the magic
And holiday fear
Cheer
...It might as well.
Your translucent shell was made for lucid dreams,
But it's Christmas Eve
And still I wish we didn't leave.

Self-Surgery

Push it out
Pull it out,
It never does seem quite right.
The almost ghost is there
Floating in and out of light.
Falling backwards,
Reaching forwards
Teaching more words to myself
Because the bandages won't stick
To the moisture of my mouth.
I was grasping for things to sing about.
But my speech is not rich
To purchase a vowel,
So I wipe up my water
With stained paper towels.

With My Back to the Basics

Everyone has their own drama
And retraces lines
In near-perfect steps.
Check under the table,
Gum and something won again,
So I just avoid the question.
Nothing is broken,
Just needing correction
But with running water
Running hot in my head,
I think I've been led
To damning connections.
You're dropping rocks in my river
Of the always-forgiver,
And these eyes are turning jaundice
From the strain on my mind's liver.

Route End 66

A quaint little frame to claim
Stretching its arms out into the sea
Being nudged by the waves perpetually.
Eventually, your eyes adjust
To the sighing sea water
And accented rust.
This memory is robust:
The loudest colors
The brightest sounds
The darkest depths
The highest clouds.
We make mischievous laughter,
Foreboding joyous corruption
A sole light exploding in slow motion.

The Middle

There are graces in the spaces
Where quiet is kept.
The pace that we left has changed,
The laces are pretty again
Because it all ties together in the end.
Unspoken amends lend a helping hand
When confronting this line
On the same side we stand
The safe side we ran
With coinciding breaths,
A sigh of relief
That now greets me with rest.

Stain

Leave your courtesy on my cheek
All of your problems seem meek for once
A sheep for once,
Guided by the sight over your walls
When you feel safe for once
And at once let them fall.
Sip on city light seas
Find a separate ease
As clocks float away in a light breeze.
And we can finally breathe
With the softly fading ticks.
There's a powerful hit
And there's glass on our lips.
Theses are highs rediscovered,
Moments for which
I would not trade another.
Said like anything short of lovers,
"Put your arm around me, motherfucker!"

Broken Loops Unspoken Through

My innocence was put in
Associate deposits.
But it would've been better kept
Somewhere under my mattress.
And even though I left with nothing
I came back with more than I had.
Do you still wander
Even when echoes don't call
Let alone respond?
There was always something off
That I could never get to
So please, just let me know
When I should come and get you.

You (pl.)...Those Other Others

Sitting sound with serpents,
Let's talk about those things
That hiss
Something I was never a part of
Apart from this.
I don't know us
I don't know this
Singing and swinging
Into arms,
Up in arms
Not quite the defensive,
Just trying to stay
Away from the fence.
There's a lot of dust
That comes with
Coming to the ground
Nothing's coming up
So now I'm sitting down.

Bitterness (and Commercials)

I've been awoken from a coma
A prison of the brilliant prism
That is my mind,
Serving twenty-five years
Of what seemed like a life,
But was only an eighth.
This is some sort of
Fantasy of choice,
But fake-smile voices
Advertise songs
I know better than they do.
Claiming them to a life
They don't even pertain to.
Robbing uniqueness,
33,000 feet in the sky,
But we never dream of the cost.
Hours gained and then lost,
Then gained and lost.
Sometimes you just have to trust
Because there's nothing else under you
But air.
And somehow you're not falling
Even if no one is there.

Worn-Out SoCal Slip-Ons

I remember running into the sea
With the other half of me.
Someone has been watching me,
Caring for the wounds they inflict
When everything gets violent.
When trauma from the dramatic event,
Pragmatic intentions so I won’t remember
Drinking coffee from a mug
(Or tea from a thermos),
That meeting in Montauk
Because I just
Don’t want to drive anyone anymore.
Gasping for air,
Grasping for hair,
I got it but I don’t get it
In perspective to a former self.
I guess I understand what you meant,
Because I think about it every moment.

Fade Out

I went for warmth and froze in burns.
Cigarette holes in my memory
As the cancer is sucked right from the source.
Walls of wax can't stand in the heat of real life,
The series of bad decisions
And inopportune timing
With bullet precision.
This life doesn't run on morality.
Deserving is subservient to the human capacity.
It has no tenacity in the oiled rigging
Of chance,
Fate,
The greatest lie
Is that everything would be alright.
Hold that against every reason why
Everything once dying is dead.
Dead weight on my encasing,
The pressure in my head.
Hold that against wishing the best,
A silent panic,
Insufficient breaths.
This path is paved with leech,
Here is the momentous breach.
For my own lessons, I surely teach:
Stability is lost, too far out of reach.

Airplane Friends pt. 2

And what we are left with
Are songs that made themselves,
As the notes that feel like ghosts
When I pick them from the shelves.

Before Infinite, Indefinite Paths

In a shortness of breath,
I let this one out
In the wispiest whispers
So they might float about.
Ever so calmly,
Through the stars we are hurled.
But cheek muscles tug,
And these fingers uncurl...

Airplane Friends

Laughter travels down the gateway,
I couldn't find a safer way home.
But there's a shaky ascension
With the intentions I've flown.
Watch the wishes you whisper to the sky
To which they lose speed and feed themselves,
Idling high.
They congest into traffic,
And the static in the radio box.
And your best thought up inventions
Become your worst intentions crossed.
Too many terminals will terminate them all.
So put your knees on the tarmac
And light them home with your heart
You'd be skittish not to finish
What you wanted from the start.
It is my most worshiped sin
To which I could never give in,
Leaping out in vain
Just to make the quickest friends.
Because planes were not made to reach for the stars,
So we build silk friends from the liars that we are.

Slipping out the Back

God sprinkled triggers all over this world
The sweetness he feeds us
And makes us unfurl.
Here in this basement
Are spotlights and twirls
Living a dream for most boys and girls.
It was surely a suave and selfish display
Of the thing that will do me in one of these days.

A later me found irony in a storage room
Bundling up for the blustery cold.
Concrete,
Discreet,
So that know one would know,
Bearing that jacket like a brand
Standing out because I know I can't stand
Hands turning over,
Over and over.

We will never get too old for this
Adding more verbs to a list in pen:
To hint,
To bend,
To make pretend
It's much mightier than the sword
When it can't cut permanent, precessing words,
Redressing words, it still means the same thing.
It sings the same ring,
The incessant, incandescent and ominous swing.

This night will end and I'll close my eyes
With a gift still wrapped while the other let me lie,
It let me slip out the back into the cold, dying night
Making everything older without tasting of wine.
I'm out of lines,
Out of time,
Out of sight
Out of mind.
It's the same end,
With a pen that just
Writes,
Writes,
Writes...

Fruits and Fermentation

Cease-fire,
Cease-fire!
The neurons are quiet
But the riot rages on.
The sky is pages long
Of watercolors drowning a vast sea,
All eyes are on me
And I can still breathe,
This is ignorance and bliss,
This is temporary free.

A Compass in the Fog

Little beads knock at the window,
They're all just trying to hold on.
They slip and stain
Into the tiniest veins
That run down the glass,
This heartbeat is strong.
So long,
They run down the cracks on the walls
Spilling every secret,
Dropping every call.

Rain mixes with phrases
And together they fall
And together is fate,
When they turn to the weight
On the shoulders of your coat.
Crooked lampposts
Leave ghosts burned into my eyes
From every day replayed,
Just shifted to the side.

Father, I have sinned.
My tongue speaks of lies to mute cries from within.
There's a devil inside that my mind has born
That singes mind's bridges
But nonetheless, keeps me warm.
I just want to stay warm,
I just want to stay warm.

I'm waiting for waiting with a purpose intact.
I'm trading umbrellas for places on maps.
If I wanted my peace,
I would've cut and dug in.
But I just want to stay warm,
Despite this storm setting in.

I Dream of FCC

It's four in the morning and I'm heading home,
Bobbing my head to the melodic drone...
I peel back the ceiling: banana split skies,
Fissioned by the the vision
Of natures valiant try.
I retraced the dreams
Left in turbines and steam
As planes slowly drifted and wandered towards home.
People fall out, leaving bodies still intact
Runways strung with light, so their lightness is led back.
But regardless, those harnessed in those seats
Are different by the landing's screech.
Some have eyes that forget how to meet,
While others are blurs in the passenger seat.

Shape-Shifter State-Drifter

You're changing the gears and hum to their grind,
You're asleep at the wheel and can't stay in the lines.
Crash your car in a ditch because you had the time
Put a stitch in your heart when there's no room in mine.
Turn around, here's your silent-sound siren
There is no use getting loud
When you're high off the ground,
Lost somewhere in effervescent clouds
Of what you thought made you proud.
They just hiss and I miss
What innocence I let you keep.
It leaks and speaks of something wrong,
You're hurdling on and your traction is gone
And you're driving with your blinders
And you won't ever find us now.
You are the fire that fuels your own hell
You are a ghost that haunts this cold shell.

Comfort In Displacement

Short-lived dreams fall from northeastern skies,
Perfect in crystal state,
But the disintegrate before their secrets can be told.
Our hearts are too warm to ever beat through that cold,
Standing on the porch like it was a decade ago,
Ice on the steps,
Lawn covered in snow.
I'm blanketed in a fresh white sheet
And tucked into discrete corners of maps.
I'd nap with eyes wide open,
I've once dreamed of this day.
Speechless in the creases
With the pieces to play every breath with a reason
Every heartbeat in treason
When the lights burn on an empty stage
And I wait for the hand that will turn a new page.

Splice and Loop

Clever lines wind up in someone else's mouth
And I admire them greatly.
A higher state innately,
But that's just reading between the lines.
Like the one that snagged and pulled me back
Like the one that snagged and pulled me back
Like the one that snagged and pulled me back
To my bed every night.
My frame of mind is just a still
Of a work print wound of bed hair and lint
And borrowed stories for the night,
Just so it doesn't get too quiet.
And this perfection was painted in cinematic display,
But the sun got bored and instead called it a day.

A Flower In Waiting

Blossom, you do sit so quietly
I've been a riot ever since you bowed out politely.
Your lightness is quite like this dizzy feeling
As my head floats up and hits the ceiling
And Stucco falls down like snow.
If any made a sound, I well would have known,
But you were neatly tucked in a sheet of time.
You are fermented grapes that I've left to wait
In hopes of returning the sweetest of wines.

Cooled Air and Shattered Glass

I'm breathing azure crystal shards
Scarring knotted vessels broken
For the proudest colored heart,
I'm dreaming now with eyes wide open.

For Jenna, A Moment Ago

I'm defined by a line that dances with ease,
The rolls like the waves the lap at my knees
And I'm brave when this knave
Makes the greatest of leaps.
The laughs in the trees are carried in the wind,
Stiff birds in the sky seem to fly paper thin,
Carrying me to my dreams,
Burying the fairytale in the clouds and the steam.
There's a gleam to the engines
With their sugary pistons,
Though needing depleting warm water and kisses.
The hottest core was once a heart,
The blueprint was stolen
And the bones, picked apart.
Even skeletons are treasures
Not measured by greed,
But by maker,
The baker of everything sweet.

To Rebuild An Empire

A frontier doubled back
Due to the attraction of a frantic heart,
Panting from the banter that sets him apart.
Every source is tapped out
On every course he mapped out
So he looks three feet about the ground,
He looks to greet the calcium light,
The crescendo of hello's and arms squeezed tight.
The foundation is vast and every corner is hugged.
Show me a different kind of sun,
Remind me of a safer love.

Touching the Ground in Newark

This state is in a state of identity crisis.
I'm dreaming of death,
A kiss from the wife of Osiris.
She is the familiar light at 6 a.m. in Jersey
When everyone's still in a hurry to leave.

Just talk it over with yourself
Over some terminal food
Dying from preservatives,
Preserving what was,
What won't
What would be
Traveling alone in this part of the fields
I feel the sun has had enough.
Enough with the light,
Its petals will wither
Its roots will run dry
Much quicker than I meant it to be.

Leave it all there as carved notes in a tree.
Let it take in the meaning
And fall out with the leaves.
Now that all has been cleared,
I can see New York from here...
This is the closest to Montauk that I'll ever be.

Mix Tapes Mixed Me Up

The deed is done
And along goes the quiet one.
In this world,
The unsettled must rest.
In this girl,
Swallowed in her heart
Was the best of me.
The rest of me was left to pass
These steps were paced and retraced
I'm taking it all back.

The memory is what I keep
The memory, I won't let leave
The memory is everything
I thought it used to be.
We never learned to need.
We never learned to speak.
You were right,
It was all a dream,
But I've got my witnesses.

Now I can't know what your business is
Dressed in suits of spider web spun,
The green-lit fog is moribund,
I am the Gatsby and you are the sun.

Damn Parallels

You learn to cherish the short bursts of light...
They lay down softly on your skin
In the thinnest coat of innocence.
My ambivalence is my guilt,
Quilted to keep me warm with maturity.
Past the point of being absurd,
Past the point of keeping your word,
I've learned everything this way.
It's the normalcy you love to hate
Where the brightest colors fade away.

Only Familiar

This is embrace is something
I can't wrap my mind around,
The distance seems bigger
After being far away,
After nothing much to say
The charge is stretched and dissipates,
Things don't hold and float away.
This is the static of progression,
An interference called regression.
We're all just visiting,
We're all growing up,
Shooting for the moon
Happening too soon.

Simpler Times

Contentment bent in every direction
I inspect the color of this light.
It's arc is short and rather contrite
But trying to stay true to its colors.
I look to my brother...
With a tiny face that holds so much light
I hope earns a burnless flight,
And my blood, keeps churning through the night.
In this repeat of festive lights,
We have to learn how to turn out alright.

Golden City Synthetic

How I love the unpolished shine,
The burnt out promises
Have always had my name on them.
It takes five hundred days to understand
Then five hundred more before you can stand it.
Flexing at the thought,
I braced for what I brought on myself.
These shelves could only hold so much
And I was held up by the rush
Of whatever was under my feet,
Digging itself out of the ground.
It was a consolation prize,
And an incessant ringing sound.
Bells of warning,
Bells of warming my chest
With the rest of best wishes
Adorned on silver dishes.
It was out on the table,
And cleared.
It made room for the absent,
Or otherwise weird.
Inevitable,
Inedible,
I forced it down.
Into circles,
Circles,
Dizzy-drowned
In the sweetest sugar mixed with lead.
From a dream in which I was already dead,
I finally woke up today...
Those dreams were great,
But far away.

Mercury Down The Aisle

A flash and I'm a part of a stranger's memories.
A smudge whose light diffuses
By the thin protective film.
But it would never protect you from the heart's kiln.
I'm buckling down for known losses,
Soon to be lost in translational.
The destination is home,
But it was gone before I could leave.

G

The floor is the only thing left to hold you up.
So you slam back to earth, but it won't slow down.
Hot tears fall to your ears
To drown out the awful grinding sound
When things just aren't working out
And I don't have the tools to fix this.
But we're given pain that comes in pills
And God slips the bill under our doors
Because we're always waiting.
And we're always saving ourselves for the insatiable.
There is no benefit to the doubts that I have
So I lay it on the table to be judged.
This is the hope that we've all learned to love.

Life Is Your Favorite Movie

Everything is a science here,
The truth in the silence
The guidance of fear,
It wrung out my pillow after long restless nights
And cooled off my head to dampen the light.
Source-4 days, we'll toast
For what I'm thankful the most
It won't be the mirrors,
It won't be the ghosts.
I just balance those acts, using both of my hands,
And pay love respect with a sarcastic grand.

Willful Corruption

We connected our paths over laughs and wax paper,
I traded my freedom because I liked the sheets.
The seats in the foyer are warm and safe.
It is never letting the colored light escape,
It is two clasping hands,
It is brotherly grace...

Depths

The world spins so madly,
I feel that I am already dead.
There's a lightness in my head
And everything that was said
Is muffled with a ring,
A stinging high pitch
That will be thrown in the ditch
With all my dirty dishes,
Put them into the ground.
This body is an anchor,
It drags the soul,
Down.

Pulling the Envelope

A child's instrument plays
And we make paper cranes
Before God decides he has lied
And crumbles our paper names.
The sender never sends,
And taps a foot for a message home,
The other: sender-returned,
So that this body sleeps alone.

Names

We sing our drinks
We sing our past
Grasped in binding,
Blinding
Ethereal light,
And the echoed wood and clocks
Make the city safe at night.
Troubled youth choose
To shed their own kind of light
That resonates in the hearts
Of lovers of the same,
Lovers that need someone to tame
Every field of our flowers
With a place and a name
And a purpose:
It nurses our souls for a day.
I have a daisy,
And its petals float away...

Restoration

It is a default face
For a default place, a pocket in time,
Tucked in my jacket
Hugged between lines.
This one has many breaks and turns,
But its meaning is direct
And its the effect of intentions
That invent a detectable glow
Giving light for its trace.
The L.E.D. palindrome has for now lost its place,
I'm already coming home
And the greatest things haven't changed.

Envy, Lust, Intentions and Trust

Behind closed eyes,
They're comfortable just out of sight
Where the right-of-way is far from right.
Lines are judged by the distance stepped,
The distance closed,
The closure met.
They bet their warmth
Not high,
Nor low,
They know no logic in the flow.
Unreasonable,
Undaunted,
Rush.
The lushness of a fatal crush.
Behind closed eyes,
The muchness clutches, cold as ice.
Behind closed eyes,
The darker things are realized.

Undiscovered Heights, Rediscovered Lights

Beautiful sin.
Chaparral,
City,
Brushing against your skin.
Everything breathes,
Car engines and leaves
Branches and streets are the arteries of an entangled life.
Polygamous glamor,
The ocean and skies and earth are one here.
Brown and blue, I hold you dear
As I sweep the dust from sweet dreams that are rusting.
I'm trusting that lushness in lost youth may soon run,
Those legs haven't stretched since I've last seen the sun.

Reconsidered

Frankness makes the canvas bare,
With trace hints of an off-shade blue.
A palette of justice with a balanced renewed.
Stay true to yourself,
If you knew what these shelves had to hold.
Paints for a straight path to hell made of gold,
Or a bed with a cross when you're withered and old.
I was told this kind of war is not fought,
It is not won with weapons
It's not one to be bought.
You stand at the barracks
Holding echoing hounds
As sickness takes foe,
And they fall to the ground.

Revisited

The same lights
Mean something different every time
And you've finally found the chords
To tie it all together.
Turn to the right
One to blame for the weather.
You get out of the car because it smells like rain
And you need to know what it feels like again.

In the Company of Thieves

I'm overstepping into holes
Trying to find a hand to hold.
I'm directing traffic,
It's getting old.
The whispering trees.
The moon is gold.
But then rustling leaves explode
In a burst of words
I should've known.
You fire empty shells, but I don't respond.
It's dead,
But still you fire on.
You point this gun in every direction
And your selfishness is my resignation.

Ironic Bombs

A little slip of paper light
Will slip under your sheets tonight
When you've tucked the beast in,
Nice and tight,
And absolved your skin in treacherous night.
I could've had it any other way
It could've happened any day.
But now it can
And now it will.
A missile in the loading bay,
Big Mike for the kids today.

Important Points

The soldier lines up by the trenches, nothing in his eyes.
His secrets are unkept, so that it's quiet when he dies.
And when this broken body finds its way into the ground,
I know I won't regret that I had turned my car around.
I know I won't forget how she had put my body down.

Punching Bags and Ticking Bombs With A Pressure-Sensitive Detonation Override: Life Is A Pretty Thing, Ain't It?

Selfish
Translucent
Transducer,
Elusive abuser of long-lost advantage.
How can you manage to go on?
The winds are howling,
On and on,
And sing to you a warning song.
The storm is returning your call,
The storm is coming in strong.
Because these chains have been undone
And I begin to run...
I'm waking,
Eyes towards a setting sun.

2,492

It was a citywide search for the insane
The streets are untamed
And we are the same.
Striving with a drive for the intangible
Grabbing for points that we make.
We are here to stay!
There is every way to get this right
Even when we get it wrong,
We've always got some off-key song to sing
That brings us back to why we are here.
It isn't of blood, but we do get near
And it's been clear
How much we are willing to give up
For no kitchen works,
For working so long,
For twenty-three strong
Yeah, that's what's up!

Touching Base

Weaves,
Weaves,
Through the stripped down trees
That grasp for the expansiveness
Of freedom.
My sanity has been redeemed,
By familiar things
Mixed with new stings
That poison us together.
I'd never say never to the antidote,
But could never find the anecdote
To rival new remnants
That replicate what I'm shown,
When local is getting closer,
But the ghosts are staying home.

The Softest Bells

This scene seems all too familiar.
A series of indirect paths,
Magnetized and hypnotizing,
While realizing these eyes
Are only looking back.
The slightest glance stolen
Steals my heart for a moment.
Bring me back,
Bring me back.
I am seasoned with the words he has spoken,
Folding the maps of bridges broken down.
I built them,
Hoping that something wouldn't drown.
I'll be the anchor,
Put me in the ground.
I'll hold your dreams
And put creases in my hands
Because this is what life demands
From a man who has felt this once,
The birth,
The journey,
Of falling in love.

To Baker And Back

I brought it on myself,
Letting the sober dust
Accumulate on my shelves.
My lifeboat was sunk
And I went down...
Down the stairs
To feel the ground on bare feet.
Everyone is waiting outside to meet me
And I pray these feet would bring me back
Quick, like a lick of lightning,
I dash out the door,
Nothing fearing, nothing frightening.
Just one step at a time,
Hoping authorities' paths won't cross with mine.
I know we crossed the line,
I know I didn't want the time
To say hello to the person
Waiting behind those doors.
This is what you see and a little bit more
Feeling a rush that bites down to the core,
An adrenaline rush that gives me the heat
To run through the cold in my first naked streak.

Deadlines

I'd put the clock on a tourniquet,
But it would tick all the same.
I'm not the one to blame for this.
I'm all worn out,
Out-blamed and pissed.
Spoiled milk spills on the page.
It will never taste better
Just bitter with rage,
Tired rage.
Helpless swings at a ghost
You're out of line, soldier.
Get back to your post.
I'd want to believe
That the days get brighter
But the light comes in sleep
And the nights meet you too early
So your breath of relief
Comes out with the sun,
And they day's just begun
Just when you're giving up.

Coming Home

I hear your voice
A sentence complete,
Now meet me at the lion's gate.
The skies will roar,
But your shrill happiness
Will keep me safe on the ground.
Now it's the sound of your blood,
My blood,
Genesis with her arms open wide,
Embracing to suture
Rips in time when she cried.
An angel's howl,
Like the darkest delight,
Packaged so neatly in a puddle of light
Spilled onto wood grain and night.
She sings judgment comes early
But I'm glad that it's so,
Light spills on old chapters
Where the ink comes to flow...

Peace of Mind Is Peace In Mind

When your friends start dying,
Hold the others in your heart...
We're too young for this to start.
Keep your feet on the ground.
Though your soul might be helium
I swear that this feeling of
Lightness
Is the tunnel that carries
That awful silent sound.
We know you're meant for it,
But not quite yet.
These hospital sheets are your safest bet,
As we bet fate with our hands clasped together,
Holding our hopes like butterflies.
Our whispers are kisses that fall on your head,
Hoping to give it rest.
You are a balloon that is tied to this state
But gently you're pulling yourself to the stars...
Oh please, not just yet,
Don't make this the start
Of when atoms stop tugging,
And just simply fall apart.

Having Pretty Friends

I'm listening to jazz while God
Washes his paint brushes in the sky
And the sun slides down like yolk.
These moments are scrambled, relived in a flash:
Stumbling through the darkness
Over concrete and grass,
Finding the light just to put it away.
Because we've found our words
Pinned to the wall with nothing to say,
Playing Marco Polo with our lips.
I know those who would kill for this,
So I hold your hand,
But look away.