Education

Ink bull diminishing iterations on a sheet of paper

Bilingual Sleep Talking

A speaking finger returned a thicker collar

"I've always liked you, since the beginning"

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.

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.

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.

Coxswain Shots and the Midnight Progression

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

Montauk

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

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.

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.

Attraction Without Films

Attraction without films

Becomes awkward honest, worn-out true.

A thousand breaths before a point

Puncture words like sharpened joints.

Irresistable

Ice water 3hr sleep

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.

Statistical Outlier

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

Waiting for the Green Light

Not waiting, but looking

We find it, it's working.

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.

In Less Than A Week

And they left you before they even asked

Alone again

You know again

The River Is An Ocean

I am running in the rain

Finite State Machine

From pitched ideas, underhand.

It's not code if they all understand.

Old People Thursday

Drinking all the beverages

Smooching all the ladies

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing New

Bring sweet death to the choir!

If you've got ammo, then fire!

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Subject and Predicate

Keep on moving,
Just keep going before it doesn't say a word
As it slips out under the talons
Of another predatory bird of silent songs.
There is a suitcase always in the corner of my eye,
But I need the time to try on every coat.
There are strange lumps in the pockets
And cold spots underneath their collars.
But do I stand firmly? Not at all.
I'm going out in the theme of retrograde
And with debts unpaid, I call the bluff.
I'm going far on a cup,
So a gallon is much enough.

Playing With Your Retinae

It seems that water has made the lighthouse go blind,
No light to capture from the rapture of the night.
What woe! There are ghosts in the creaks of the wood
That haunt illuminescent light bulbs,
Childhood dreams that were still fast asleep.
When there is no time to pray
You go straight for the source,
Against the forces of gravity
Grabbing me from going up, up, up!
"That is enough!" the wind blew and we stood our ground,
But soon we had to stand closer, and we had to stand down.
Lest we be forgotten because the best we did was try,
We descended from the hills, writing our names into the sky.

So Close To Icons

A woman took us in and brought us towards heaven.
She said she'd wait as we tested out fates,
Spending to time to take it in
And weigh ourselves on the greater scale.
Splendid graffiti, pristine and white
Like a well disguised wolf among sheep,
Pressed against the darkening clouds.
Life continues in roundabouts,
Some afraid to get in,
Some too safe to ever want to get out.
This eye contact is the closest,
I wouldn't dare to pretend,
Lost in the rhythm of a circle
That gives our hearts back in the end.

When Plans Fall Through

Tonight we sit on a moving train,
Enjoying conversation as every station passes by.
There's no point in trying in dim lighting;
We've got stories about drinking and fighting
So we can light up our faces that way.
It's been a while since I've broken like that,
Crack joke, slip a smile under the door.
With that kind of lip, you must be asking for more,
But there isn't a damn thing you couldn't tell me about
That wouldn't sound better when we're just broing out.

Free Parking In Downtown L.A.

This city street sleeps with a little more color
Met with the quiet ghost of rush hour past
As the last cars wander on the symmetric grids
That have more foresight than their own lives.
We've got nowhere to go tonight,
We've got memory cards and youthful hearts
To capture all the industrial light,
The afterglow of man's triumph.
Towers so tall, they arch on the weight in our eyes
And bump against explosions held by gravity.
We overstep with expectations of flight
And pride our lives in iconic stills
That only increase its sense of brevity.
We make own figures and fill it with paper,
Light it up, and breathe in its levity.

Little Champ

The young ones stayed at home tonight
While the adults hunted for their money
Necessary when there are no teeth left to pull,
One too young, the other too old.
In the cold, we paced the streets on which
I had scraped my knees before you twinkled,
First a tear from a tear,
Then a life projected in my parents' eyes.
And now it is safe to say that we're all alright.
The concept design was finally realized,
My faith in your courage
That poured onto this life chasing satellites.

Throwback Composure!

"And after all that I've been
Through to save me,
I can do without you
And now I'm throwing you away
And I can only blame myself for this."
This road goes on and on
Until the ground kisses the sky,
And every time you sing to me
I'll fall in love and drown.
Kid, I know you hate it,
But maybe it's time to settle down.

Foolish Hit

I am the scientist, slurring and slow,
And I already know how it ends.
Your indications are tactless
Your rules always knew how to bend.
How many stitches does it take
Before the skin heals as a jacket,
Because it isn't a redefinition
If the recognition doesn't seem fit.
This is my favorite part,
When the cars don't stop at night
When the drunks are alright pretending.
I may be stupid, but consciously so,
And I already know how it ends.
The implications are merciless,
Even your light knows how to bend.

Real People Now

I've never gone into the southern hemisphere
But it was somehow appreciated,
Exploratory to say the least
With certainly nothing to hide.
There were no treasures, only gems
In the stems of great foundations
Left to grow their own creations
Of beauty and pride kept in flawless hems.
I grew in a clay pot
That was carried in a wandering arm,
But what we had forgotten was never let go
And supported the vines that kept us in the know.
How long can we make this last?
You know, it never hurt to just ask
That this warmth would keep beneath the sheets
For every time you would come back.

More Than Math And Science

I'm sorry about the sky,
I just know he isn't home.

The Ones That Came After The War

The storm isn't letting up, I can feel it.
Pandora is still sealed,
Half-assed in cheap Christmas cheer.
I should stop throwing these guns
Just because I don't know how to use them.
You gave the crown back,
You gave it all backwards
And watched them march into the trenches.
I would give anything
For it to come as well as I passed.
I will swim in metal on concrete
And greet it with a graceful smile
For a clip to hold your hair back
And to fight the extra mile.

Mass Flow Conservation

There is a box smudged on glass
With an X fingered through it.
It's done. Take it off the list.
If I had only knew how to save my day,
I would put another record on.
But this list will still play me
And we will suspend ourselves in steam,
Raindrops and metal
That my heart hopes will never rust.
I want to see the downpour make a stream
That would hit the floor before it ever beads.

The Party Law

I have my own in a cereal box,
The feet I walk on call out the prize,
Anachronistic fatalistic.
God, just tell me something new,
No, just something refreshing.
Divine world, small intervention,
And a rainbow LCD display
From distracting electronics and rain.
This is when it changed everything.
Have mercy on my vulnerability.

So Everyone Can't Read Every Text

I don't need the other me to tell me about my fantasies
As dark and twisted as it is to sleep on a misty highway
With both hands on the wheel,
And then to awake with a ghost limb.
This is the haunting of magician versus scientist,
Never learned how to make it disappear
Never missed a method to say it isn't here.
As recursive is without a vex a stop to turgid flow,
You should know this isn't something
You should think I'd never know.

Looking At Stars From Planes

This world is a powder puff.
At least the baker took the time to let it breathe
And he outlined rivers, mountains and trees,
A sprinkle for every street corner.
I feel warmer with the thought,
Some softer bells couldn't tell me
That I'm coming home.
Let's be thankful that no one is shooting,
I've got enough that you can wish on me if you want.

Suitcases Out!

What number am I on? I almost won't
Speak a sentence without a solution,
Unless I'm going for partial credit.
So don't believe everything I say,
This life is better left less of a gamble,
But, ladies and gentleman,
It's time to place your final bets.
These workhorses are coming in,
They're reaching down the final stretch.

Hold the Line

Words, where have you been?
The numbers came by the other night;
I think they're here to stay
And they've got others coming single-file.
Continuous flow with no conservation,
Now everything is some kind of observation
Of science. This is my compliance
To the terms of agreement: L.H.S. & R.H.S.
...Give me a hand to shake,
It's hard to say goodnight
When your brains have gone to sleep.
It's getting late, just close your eyes,
Tell consciousness to leave.

Stapled Paper Monster

There's no time to be a veteran
When you have to fight another war.
We are just square pictures and numbers
Who fight with ourselves and with the other.
Eat the atoms in the foil,
Break and bend them as you find fit
As long as you hold them together in the end.
They'll be pulling and pushing,
Your muscles contract.
You are moving forwards
And don't want to think back,
Because this is the fight.
There are no white flags that will fly in the night.
If there's a bullet, you won't dodge it.
In the thick of it all,
There is no magic, just logic.

Ominous Precipitious

Absent days come in a wave
As the ocean reaches the beach
With nowhere else to reach.
Now it comes down on itself
In hopes of holding its own weight,
Just wait for me on the other side.
We will fly or fall like the rain
Before it has always meant something,
So just make something good
Or stop me in my tracks dead.
Here is the runway, but there is the sky...
Go forth, full speed ahead.

That Isn't Your Name

There is nothing more to that life
Than television and kinesthesia,
You wait for a train on the wrong platform,
How long has it been since you’ve gotten off track?
I've got my pencil mustache
To draw out all of these words
That I hid under a top hat.
But what is it that you say
That you don't know what it means?
Wear me out on your incessant treading,
The screeching of rail and flashing lights.
Don't cross me, you have lost me
More than what I think would ever be right.

Welcome to the City

This reminds of the time spent
By the buckeye tree of quiet family;
I could trace long fingers in the dirt
And my mother told me what it was worth
As my father watched on quietly.
This is how time wound us down,
Now we spin in private circles
And scuff our shoes and streak the floor.
I never meant to dance around the door,
But absent bells ring in my ears as a symphony.
It's cold enough to snow here,
But we're all waiting for that somebody.

Usually, There's The Music To Cue You...

And it went a little something like:
"Everything will be alright,
The pilot light just needs a little gas."
I asked if you could see the lighthouse from here,
You waited for it to come back around again
Like it was always getting sick
Whenever it went on the water
And then under.
But we'll just sing irony in our rusted voices,
Desperate screaming into warm bubbles
That explode when it reaches the surface.
They are fireworks of sugar and salt,
Delicate earthquakes that look for a fault.

The Transformation

You've been talking about death for hours on end,
You're making a mistake
You think to yourself, rubbing alcohol tears.
Will you tuck this one under your bed
With the rest of your color book monsters,
Who conspire in the heat of the moment
And light the fire right beneath you?
Lately I've been having these feverish dreams,
Where these cheap curtains keep the desert outside
And a turbine pumps blood only let out at night.

The Nearsighted Excuse

I don’t think I could listen to anything softer,
Softer than silence. Listen to your stability,
Love the sweet danger foreboding, refreshing,
A dirty smirk as you shiver.
We’re just a couple lonely people
Trying out the breaths of one another.
If this skin could only keep the blood in,
These nerves could work up enough
To tell my chest it doesn't need to be
Against this door with unfinished numbers,
A black, charcoal-etched evening shore.
It seems you grew into yourself well;
I will take the dive and hold the rest.
It's time to put my best away,
This time the night gets one more day.

Too Much Consolidation

If you put it all in one place just to count it,
Has it really counted if you realize
That those faces won't ever seen you again?
I sure hope I haven't loss the touch,
Because I really do miss the contact
Upon the tarmac burnt from friction
To the TV-through-blanket addiction.
By then I will have stopped paying attention,
But my nerves will bend for it
And I'll lie in your lap like a board
For you to wash away your worries.
Sweetness, you're a sugary winter
That won't need a grain of salt
To give me the traction to react.
Speak me a soft coat of words,
I need their warmth holding my back.

Blinky Eyes

Choose your fate:
Dark into the woods or deep under the waves,
You can find me in the green room,
Lecturing myself on how to bury my dead.
How much can we keep in folded paper
Before it crumples under the weight of our words?
The world just dropped from under us all
And we are suspended in pretenses and grief.
It's time tome to terms with your reality,
It's time you learned how well you can breathe.

Settle, Settle...

We can make our home here
A dying brother on a frosted-over rocking chair
Who can barely feel the weight on his legs
He feels like he is flying
He feels like he is free
The colors black in and out
A thousand winks from a Christmas tree
There's a slippery descent into innocent snow
It'll be safer in the morning,
This is where we'll make our home.

The Knots In Sick Arbors

Someone left their love in a lemon tree
That turned as bright as warning;
It was so warming and dissolved free.
Fading pictures for ghosts on telephones poles,
Pinned up with rusty stables and old ambitions.
Every tassel was torn off, but still no response.
You tell yourself to call your older echoes when you can,
Before that creaking sound is too foreign,
Before the door won't fit your hand anymore.
It seems to me like those locks still fit in place,
So I wouldn’t quit it unless you’re ready to quit it
It won’t matter who did it if you’ve always hid it.

Refractory

A push comes to shove and you run your mouth,
Lips and brows had made a vow seven sunrises before:
Never again, not now and never more.
But we returned just as we came
With a list of names on a pink backdrop.
We fall back into the assembly lines
With hopes in our coats we put on one last time.
The refractory is an act that we need to shut down
The factories are after me; they’re calling me out.

Hands to Landing, Tuck to Rolling

Put some days in between,
Down feathers in your favorite pillow.
Tossing and turning wouldn't turn it over,
So you got over the blankets and sighed
Because it takes too much to lie in sleep.
"I'm coming," were the words whispered,
But there was no time to wait.
You wake up to the final descent
Tray tables up, fastened to your seat,
Looking calm, Looking cool,
Look at yourself with honesty.

Let's Not Pretend Hazards

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

Posthumous Posture

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

It Isn't Fair

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

Carriage House Return

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

The Respect Is Mutual

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