Of course you did.

I'm not going to freak out or anything,

but your baby looks just like you and I hate you more than ever.

I'm forever butterflied

chest on display and

you're playing house.


Both of us leftovers on another bastard's plate.


Tonight when he changes the diaper

he'll be wrist-deep in both of

your

shit.

Jason and Jenni split up.
I knew about her
what/who she was doing.
There aren't enough miles to silence the rumour mill.
My old way was tempted to move on it.
Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm not the same person that I left behind.
Being new is difficult.
I just want to get destroyed at Havanas.
It just seems so sad now.
I can never go back. I got out. To go back would be to attempt to reclaim a time that passed me by.
I feel like my friends are just beyond a transparent brick wall,
I can see them but I can't get through. I don't fit.
Its like listening to Bright Eyes or Sublime or 90s alternative.
They were moments and those moments are gone.

We as humans are in constant metamorphosis and rebirth. We are constantly reevaluating ourselves and seeking to more fully understand our intentions and ascertain our correct trajectory. Meanwhile, the trajectory is the story and we're missing it. I am missing it. The one piece of the puzzle that I feel entirely definitive in is the fact that we are meant to ease one another's suffering. As I try to move beyond this I can feel the frustrating limitations of my humanity close in and I am left as dumb and simple as before. Trying to shed old skin is spiritually painful. Denying my base nature in order to strive toward a perceived "greater good" is a constant struggle. This is one of the main differences between my current and former life. I have an awareness of a larger picture beyond my immediate mood, mindstate, or desire. I have to wonder if this will lead to an overall strengthening of my character and utility or if it will merely serve to be a small sober stopover in an otherwise wasted existence. Everything is so well mixed with fear that I can almost fail to separate the two. How foolish that we should be sprung from the unknown and yet find it so sinister. How can we be made of the infinite possibility and yet strive every moment to control every second. Fear, in my opinion is the greatest enemy of man's ability to overcome and live the subconscious ideal that he has for himself.

I am too comfortable, this comfort needs to desist or else I will be trading one prison for another.

It is silent now.

Finally,

all
is
silent.

These words are mine alone.

A dialogue for myself and my creator
now only poignant discourse
or didactic discussion,
this is an end to the celebration of
mayhem.

It is time,
not to forget the past,
but to heal from it.
Let this be a salve for the burning,
a stitch for the wound.

Be honest.

No more superfluous speech and sentence structure
only raw reality.

There is no audience.

God guide my hand.

Plumbing the depths,
ploughing the fields,
riding the wave and
burning
the midnight
oil.

There's a simple joy in
kicking off your socks
after a long day,
in coming back home
after losing your way and
following feet first with
feet
up.

To laugh over hot tea.

I've closed the cover on bedlam
and met simplicity at
the
door.

And there is a lot more art in this
than every glass that I pressed
to my lips let
the record
reflect that I miss them but
I'll probably never be back there
again.

I don't know if I'll ever
see another yellowed day-after,
lying about and
tracing every scar.
Each bruise reading like an epic
and
every freckle, a
fable.

We are all simply energies,
dust in differing excitation,
being given moments in
exchange
for a higher
call.

So as dutiful conduits
we take up the plough
and revel in each pinprick
between the beginning and
now.

Light for my fingertips,
outside the night,
a bright white glow
and a
blue white hue.

How have you been?

Why can't you make it work?
Your body stayed so nice and
your eyes still
so green.

Yet nada is nigh.

How strange it would feel to count the rings
around your spine after all these revolutions round
the
sun.

You're still so much surface,
you never plumbed the depths like
I hoped you would.
You're a bramble
pricked onto
pantleg -
still in the mix
still around.

Come for the ride,
stay for the potential.

Tonight I challenged myself to say something uplifting.

How'd I do?

It's been a long time since I've seen someone beautiful.
Day to day, the typically deranged,
march past in their incessant sameness
each indistinguishable from the last.
The first sets the bar low for the next,
leaving me beige,
sparks of ecru
on a sandpaper sea.
It's been awhile since I've been totaled.
Since I've been spat upon and tossed out with the filth,
pitiful and propped up
by the rotting wood of the wounded.
Since I've heard the mournful symphony of bottle and can,
the sting of citrus on a glass split hand,
my red throat raw
with tobacco's pitch black
burn.
But I've seen the leaves turn over
in anticipation of rain
as the thunderheads rolled in along the touchlines,
the emphatic wind shaking hands with the blades of the pitch.
I've seen the flight of hawks as they scan the fields for prey.
I've tasted my own sweat on my own tongue
as my troubled past falls slowly
from my battered and beleaguered
frame.
I sleep the sleep of the dead and the free
dreaming of bawd and brawl
in sacred rest denied the wicked:
the rest of the redeemed.

Still,
it's been so very long
since I've seen
someone
beautiful.

After all these years, what strikes me most about life, when examining the array of its most defining features, is its inescapable bittersweet impermanence. No earthly creation, natural, or chemical bond, though having the appearance of being held dear or inexhaustibly strong, is built to withstand the cruel test of separation and time. Eventually, even the purest of gentle intention is given flight and released to the fickle wind of fortune, its journey now set skyward to find an individual path through the cold cosmos of fate. As these newfound wanderers set forth on this imperative exploration, they take with them a name, a face, a smell, a memory, once so undeniably alive but now irretrievably absent from the mind of the one they forsook for freedom. As time, in its typical and careless fashion, moves forward with unbridled alacrity and brings circumstances beyond control, the who of the world might be frequently lost, but, in this unavoidable act of losing, allows room for the soul's unique why to appear.

I do believe that I am seeing this larger picture, the why it all has happened since the start,
and what I am viewing
tends not to disappoint
at
all.

There were often mornings like this
outside my open window at 604
Washington.

A grey rain damp
black coat day,
served with side of yellow cab ride:
downtown Raleigh
late 2014.

Mud colored sidewalks,
the stench of modernity,
dragging feet and baggage
toward mostly habit supporting
servitude.

Fences and gutters
streetsigns and alleyways,
my flickering cigarette,
ashes in the wind.

Arrive alive. Finally, Kyla.

You tough as nails conundrum.

My love for you so thinly veiled,
so soft against your harsh demeanor.
A satin skin forced to thicken
when your husband's bones
were blown apart
over a foreign and unforgiving desert.

I loved you and your grief.
I love you still.

Words never did you justice
so I'll leave it all at this:

Congratulations darling.

Buckman over breakfast was always my favorite.

The Germans would have to wait
as bacon stormed our eggs of Normandy.

Buckman over breakfast.

Freshman frittata,
Buckman biscuits,
the world outside in a rush hour fit while
our hangovers drowned in tea with sugar.

Picture this:
A pitcher that
we drained but good with purpose.

Buckman butter,
Buckman jam,
Buckman: the morning's hash browned special.

Being anywhere with her was easy.

But Buckman over breakfast was always my favorite.

I wonder if one day
someone will read between my lines
and see themselves a bit in it and
find a place to
belong.

I'd like it if one day
someone would think that I'm all magic
and we talk till dawn -
neither of us feeling like we said too much.

Maybe one day
we'll call it even.
Not a me over you
or you more than I,
just even.
Even on the bed,
legs crossed,
knee to knee,
unraveling our minds and
tangled pant legs.

Just something calm like thunder over the plains
lightning in the distance
rains on the horizon
People and shelter in ample supply.

Wisecrack prophets on the lamp-lit corner
comfortable in skin and evasive youth
cars flying by faster than our vaporous cares.

One day,
yesterday will have been worth it
and tomorrow not so far away.

I see now that every home,
full of all or some we love,
is the closest to home
we'll ever be.

By my breath
through my teeth
against your ear,
licking and lapping,
raising your hair
against your better judgment.

I'm a bad idea
you're a traffic fatality
a tragedy for the papers
pictures of roadkill
at 4 am.

What's there to shout anymore,
all that rage against nothing
the fitful madness of fleeting youth
oxytocin is a liar
and time is a vandal.

We'll bury our forebears,
we'll bury our progeny,
we'll bury ourselves.

If we were to choose,
independent of reptilian tendency,
would we choose this?
Here until not
alive until dead -
tongues teeth and eyes
our fingers probing each other's orifices
trying to plug the
leak.

Building skyward while
wasting toward nothing
trying to stave off disappointment
one bed frame at
a
time.

Little bluebird
gentle jay,
slight of feather
most brittle bones.

Morning raven,
feathered black,
cut to rails
claw scrape on glass.

Rest near each wing to wing.

Two companions
hearts so dear,
strong
but giving way to
winter.

Jaybird fly to
the woodcock's side
find shelter
from its
shiver.

Grow old, content,
till dust again
mother moon gives way to
light.

Live your days
my gentle jay
and let the raven return
to
night.

I should be sleeping.

One of my greatest enemies is creeping dissatisfaction.
Another is self obsession.
Life happens outside the sphere of my own feelings
I just somehow forget it.

Just a few in seven billion are even aware that I exist.

I don't think I have treated many of them with as much dignity as maybe
they deserved.

That is, beyond the usual take off yours and take off mine.

I've always wondered about the true intentions of the people around me
ever since I threw nightly molly parties and
everyone rolled and rolled.
Eventually I had no real idea if they would have come back so often
if not for
the drugs.

One night Brutus took a picture of me in silhouette on top of a train.
I loved that night.
We would get high and walk the tracks to the concrete plant
sitting on top of the cars and just breathing in our carefree abandon
never minding the night ending soon
soon to be strung out at dawn
waiting for someone to make the move to leave.

I'm depressed,
stupidly nostalgic for something empty,
wishing I could reclaim something that ended long ago.

I should be sleeping.

Instead I'm marinating in a dust pile of feelings
wondering when I will stop being so dramatic
but secretly hoping
that I never
will.

If I'm being honest
which does not come naturally for the wasted
I miss my late night compatriots.

There is something so inviting about the void.

It's not easy on the outside.
It's so warm in oblivion and
out here you have to constantly remind yourself
that you're going to be ok
even though you have no idea
what in the world you are doing
and it could all fall apart at any moment
and you could always give up and
go back to garbage
walking the land drunk and
muttering to yourself.

All these rose colored memories
weigh black on your ribs
as these average everydays are eternally
the monotony of
same.

And you never have anywhere to put it.
I may try to give it to you
and you may try to give it to me
but it is all entirely our own
and we sleep uneasily because of some perceived
existing or impending
misery.

Sober, you remember what it feels like to lose
and peek inside of coffins,
that life is eventually
lifeless
and you struggle to leave behind something meaningful
while at the same time
succeeding
and your true idea of success looks a lot different
than you probably imagined
and you would live alone, naked, and
sick of it all
but you can't bear the thought of never hearing another
heart







beat.






Living to die
a pile of bones on a barstool
or first class accomodations
does it even matter which?

Dead in tatters or tiaras
is dead all the same
and there is momentary comfort in
the
void.

Birthday cake.

The miracle of doing laundry at midnight.

Heart full

hands full

all cotton

no cups.

Dreaming of Paris and

meaning it.

Earning the take and

keeping it,

So many more inspired days

than sullen ones

clouds in shot glasses.

Four months alive.

For once I'd actually pass

the piss test

but they don't want it anymore.

2 bed 1 bath

Listening to Damien Rice

you perched precarious

atop faux granite countertop

lecturing me on Plath

two full glasses of wine

two packs of cigarettes

smoking our throats raw

trying to feel it all at once.

Then we'd go to bed

and I would take your clothes off

and you always looked good like that

and I would pull you into my mouth

and your back would arch in the moonlight

and in the living room

undeterred

Damien played on.

For M

You're the most beautiful person I've ever met.

You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

I'm all kinds of glad that

you are you and you are

in my

life.

After the initial joy subsided

Who is he?

Where does he go,
what does he do?

Whose clothes are these
and whose shoes?

These colors aren't right
and the fit isn't right.
Who bought the thing,
and why?

The streetlight is on
the fire has gone out
its finally calm and
the receding waters
give up the captive land.

The linens are pressed
and the bed made,
the recycling is sorted
and he forgot to say

"Good girl"

when lobbed an easy one.

Now its for the better.

Now its for the better.

What a shame it took so long.

Sometimes dark,
darkly gentle,
they can say it in eights and sixteenths
and tell my whole life.

Sitting by the pool
feet dangling above the depths
high as a heron
telling you I have a secret.

In the bathroom smiling
mouth on mouth
your chemical tongue so soft,
finishing me,
bringing me to my final hour.

Washing your back,
your black hair draped over the curve of your hand
I taste the water on your skin
run my hand between your legs
press into the ink
and you write your story on my hands.

Sitting on a pillow surrounded,
always surrounded,
by desperate, searching,
wanting faces.
I can't take it.
I'm melting into the floor
they're all gone forever.

Raleigh of the final four years.

Skin is real
sweat is real
not knowing what to say
feeling alone sometimes
is real.

No powder
no glass
no additive
no burn.

Air is real
sky is blue
blue and real.
Real sun
real heat
real steps.

Wanting to feel it is real
wanting to taste it is real
wanting to be inside of you is real
being okay without it
is real.

Seeing a future
is real.

Having a future
is real.

Being here now
is
real.

I walked home under the purple sky and I thought
how I'd like to take a walk at sunset with you
and all the ones who came before you
just once,
one more time to say it sober
to get it right as right as could
to answer the finality
finally
me.

Through this crystalline lens I find
that my thoughts have changed
my heart has changed
I am change.
I am equal parts blessing and
I don't know what I saw in you.

I want to set it all free
and let thirty years melt away
like the streets of London in summer
and hide from them my face
and turn toward the escaping
star
as it slips below the horizon
and finally puts the matter all
to
bed.

When You

When you look out at the wide blue sky

and everything is fine

what is there to write?

Words are for darkness

when it is not all blue and light.

If you want words

then tell someone that

you love them and

mean

it.

Informed Delivery

dis
jointed

this
drama

smells
like

lies.

dis
jointed

these
lies

smell
like

drama.

They Called Her Vanessa

She went by Vanessa
when she spun around the
center of the neon universe,
stars flying from her fingernails,
two planets in front
two planets behind.

Wherever we would go
all the women rolled their eyes
and the men snapped their fingers
and gave me a wink.

She left little to the imagination
and you can imagine
what I mean
by
that.

At the bars
they would line up in great number.

They always seemed to know her -
they called her Vanessa.

She said,
"Don't worry daddy,
its just 'cause I give out fake names
on the
dance floors."

Here they would come:
frat boys,
financiers,
bikers,
bloodsuckers and
brawlers,
all lining up like bowling pins
waiting for a turn
with the
knockout.

My only job was to
feed her drinks
and try my best
to keep the drugs
out of her hot
little
hands,
always keeping
one eye open,
in case I needed to reign it back in
when she eventually
leaned toward
the
edge.

Once,
she brought a young conquest over
for me to inspect;
this one was dinner and
dinner was apparently
served.

I lost my legendary cool.

I tore into the both of them
with an alcoholic rage,
scaring Vanessa's trophy and
sending her into a
fierce and
unreasonable
fury.

She screamed bloody murder until
fire
spewed from her nostrils,
the many onlookers shifting nervously
in their heels and loafers.

When I'd heard enough I
exited stage right,
leaving her to her entourage
and buffet of earthly pleasures.

It's alright.

These days,
I think about it all and
smile.

She had some guts.

She was mostly breast and thigh
but she sure had some guts
too.

She was full of guts and chum
and she laid plenty of both wherever she went.

When you're a shark,
you don't fear the spear
or the propeller.
But the hook -
the hook is far
too much
to
bear.

a little bitter, but nonetheless true

I know so many
and I so often forget
who are so unhappy and
only have themselves to
blame.

and they get real literary about it.

they splash around in their woes
and still somehow manage
to be so
dry.

endlessly dry.

they masquerade as
the broken and the damned
with their designer problems
woe is me
why am I so alone?

they martyr themselves by the hour
trying to convince heaven and all else
that they are not like the rest of us,
can't be like everyone
else.

psychosomatic ailments
psychotic delusions
hypochondriac
snake oil
folderol.

the worst part is how they always find me.

they always seem to think
that I am just like them,
they lick their lips
at the
MYSTERY
until I tell them about jail
and addiction
and dead children
and then suddenly,

"oh look at
the
time!

see,
I was in this relationship
with another one who cared for me
but the grass in Ireland is emerald
and I heard there are men
in Denmark who will carry me on their backs
and its just all so
domestic
and it gives my inner author
the blocks
and I was born to melt my eyes
while staring at the sun
and
realize while dying
the real poetry
was in front of me
the whole
time."

then they run back to write
about how artistic they are
how no one understands them
how they cry into cornbread
and how they panic alone in the dark.
such great thinkers
such victims of a cruel and
indiscriminate
universe.

all the while,
the broken and the damned
(the real ones)
buy the store brand shampoo on discount
skip dinner
and wake up when
its time
for
work.

Ever Since Clarity

Ever since clarity
I have seen my skin tighten
my joints ease their ache
my muscle return from bone
and I finally am
as I had always
been.

And I have taken
to going on very long walks
during these summer
Jersey
afternoons.

I walk and I think
and I do not think and
I
remember,
regret,
laugh,
listen,
and
dream.

Today,
the sky was clouded
grey and ominous
with a stern wind
that knew where it was going and went
there.

I walked among the trees
I touched the leaves
I felt the pavement under my feet unforgiving
and I swore I heard the waves
even though I'm quite far
from
water.

I walked through long soccer fields
devoid of sport,
under massive lightposts
taller than a half dozen me's could ever be,
and I felt the grass coarse and green
reach out and
brush my
ankles.

I sat down and the world happened all around
me
and I was so overcome with gratitude.

I saw faces and heard their names
and I reached out by phone
to thank them
for always being with me
in my
heart.

Thanked the ones who
as we've met
have transcended bodies
and felt our souls
irreversibly
entwine.

This is my greatest newfound treasure,
this is what I hold closest to my chest:
an abundance
of gratitude and
love.

I feel like I can barely be contained
inside of myself
that I need to exist as the purest utterance
of this stardust that I so imprefectly am
and lift others up higher so
that they can see beyond the horizon
without limitation,
bias,
or
pain.

I crossed the water before them
and I have built a fire on the other side
so that they can see their way across
whenever the time comes and tide comes
to lighten their boats
and likewise
heavy
burdens.

When they arrive there
I'll be waiting,
one if by land
two if by
sea.

With all that I am
all of my heart
all of
me.

A One Track Mind

She
like a one woman pride
does as she likes
with utmost taste
devoid of regret
swollen with composure
a portrait of pharaohtic poise.

I think the loveliest things about women
while simultaneously
wanting to do the most depraved things
to
them.

A couple I have known for years
aren't doing so well,
or so it would appear,
as she has taken to leaping
onto other men's laps
and thrusting her tongue
down other men's
throats.

I don't really blame her.

I have known her dreamboat
for years
and he and I were partners
in the proliferation of
late night drug plans
and
purchases.

Its hard to get it in
when there's all those lines
to cut.

I hate to admit it
but a part of me
would love a crack at her.

The farce is that
when I said she was sending
the vibes my way
they nearly swung me
from the
rafters.

I'm rarely wrong.

I was graciously given
several talents
and the discernment of overtures
is one of
them.

But these days
I'm a man in a desert.

One gets used to having the
female form
for dinner
seven days
a
week.

I used to think such romantic things.

We lose our minds in all that flesh
once we pull it onto us
that fateful and damning
first time.

Then everything that comes after is
just the insatiable appetite for
more.

On Saturdays I go to the market;
there is a girl who works behind the meat counter.
She has the most beautiful eyes,
so full of kindness.
Inside her there's
not a single rotten
bone.

She is always smiling,
always helpful,
and always so eager
to
please (naturally I like that most of all).


I look forward to seeing her every week
but she's Amish,
and I never learned to play
the
plough.

I'd give it a shot
but she aint' ready.
Her bonnet is too white
and her dress doesn't have a single
crease.

I need a little dirt under the nails -
a little wear and tear,
I don't want to be saved
I want a
wingman.

A rock to roll with me

and break apart
the
plough.

Extended Stay

We lay on the hotel bed
hungover and low as
snail droppings
after all that coke and
wine.

We spent the afternoon
watching fat free television,
hiding from our
plans and
enemies.

The only time anything moved
was when I stood to make her
a grilled cheese
on the hotplate in the corner
of the
room.

The tile floor told
the story of
our love:

shards of broken glass
and a thick pool of red nail polish
from where I had thrown her things
against the wall
the night
previous.

I had told her to leave
again
after telling her to leave
so many times
before.

She called out from the bed,

"Daddy, I've never heard you sing,
I want you to sing for me in the
shower."

I smiled.

"Of course,
kitten."

I gave her the sandwich and
she perched on top of the pillows while she ate,
an alabaster dove on
linen
branches.

I was happy watching her
though I knew that she would fly away again,
it was just a matter
of
time.

She would lock herself in some bathroom
with a late night pill pusher
or
promiscuous couple
and disappear for
however
long.

I thought to myself,
"At least tonight,
my dove,
I've caught you
and fed you and
kept you
warm.

Just like I have
so many times
before.

You're safe for now."

When she finished eating I
locked the door,
turned out the light,
and got back
into
bed.

A Dream

T and her dog
Finn
were at my house
but
Finn wasn't Finn,
he was a big, brown
dummy of a dog and
he had gotten into a cache of
take-away sweet and sour sauce
and he was golden orange from
top to
tail.

T was busy so
I got Finn in the shower and
hosed him off until
he was as good as
new.

He smiled at me for a moment
then ran off to pursue glory
in the heat of
his own dog day
in
summer.

I tried to tell T that
the dog was clean but
she wouldn't respond to any of
my calls or
messages.

I eventually found out,
through the vine,
that it was because there was
someone
new.

I wrote her that I'd found out about it
but when she came over,
tail tucked in,
I wasn't upset.

I told her
that I know life is short
and that she should be with someone
who makes her
happy
even if
it wasn't
me.

I said not to worry,
I would take care of Finn until
things
settled
down.

She smiled at me for a moment
then walked out the door
to finish a life story of which I
would never
know the
ending.

I stood for awhile in the ensuing silence.

The sun came through the blinds as
the dusty afternoon cast fences
over the carpeted
floor.

I grabbed Finn's leash and
set off to find
him.



When I woke it was 7:30,

I got cleaned up
and left
for
work.

Rufus After Dark

I lay down tonight to listen
to Rufus Wainwright in the dark.

Sideways,
knees to elbows,
I wanted to
vomit.

I've been dragging the shallows
and swimming in my own
wake.

These tales are tired of me.

I throw them down the hole,
they fall and echo this and
that.

I tie them to canaries.
I tie them to my ankles
and I wade out in the water
to see if I fly
or
drown.

Alone in the dark listening to Rufus.

We don't even know what to feel anymore.
We're tired of peeling the nails from our fingers
of scooping our eyes into our cereal,
of spitting out what we're forced to swallow -
chin up
it
get's
better.

I run my tongue along your misery,
you wrap your lips around mine.
Let's do it until they kill us,
or until we kill ourselves
and fall away
to Rufus Wainwright
in the
dark.

How different it all is now.

No more fires.
No more smoke.

A fistful of dollars
that has lingered in
my
pocket.

The neon dark,
the girls all quit,
the barman resigned and
the phones gone
silent.

Just me in the middle:
bittersweet.

When Alexander watched
as his conquests burned,
I imagine that he felt somewhat
the
same.

They were the best of times.
They were the worst of times.

They were the worst of times at best.

I've kept with those I truly love
and who truly love
me
back.

Here we go.

Go, go, go.

Next time I see the sunrise
it will be while kissing you
awake.

SevenOhFour Nine Five Seven Oh To Three One

I haven't spoken to you in a decade,
well,
not by mouth,
but
I've written to you most nights for
fourteen
years.

See,
I admired you once
and
its just love ya know,
once when I
was traveling
alone.

I wrote to your mind to
pirate your heart
and...

I'm so eloquent when it doesn't matter
but I'm going deep down here man
and the words they
struggle.

I know nothing about you.
You probably told me once but
I was drunk then,
your knight in
vomiting
armor.

I may not be your favorite.

You may not concern yourself with
me at
all.

I've checked you out since
once or twice a
thousand
times.

Stealing sideways
glances of you:
green eyes
tousled blonde
two children
palms up
heart wide
open.

I don't have any thoughts on any of it,
its all yours and
my place is right here
tap tap tap
tap tap tap
bathed in blue.

But you are not alone.

So what if we as humans have
burned cities to the ground and
stolen food from the mouth
of
babes?

So what that we destroy ourselves
and each other and
everything in
between?

We survive.

We claw toward heaven until
we see them pearlies and
if they don't let us in we
all go down
together.

You are not alone.

I don't know if this helps
or if its just the piss of drunks
judy,
you be the judge on
that.

But you are not alone.

tap tap tap
tap
tap
tap.

Morning View

Water Under The Bridgers

"We talk for hours until finally
sleep takes over
the amphetamine"

Phoebe nailed it.

I remember getting on the train one time
in Flatbush,
I have no idea why I was there.

There were three of us,
empty husks of
rotten corn,
strung out shoelaces
parched and pale among
the REAL
people riding
to wherever the devil sent
them.

I painted a poor excuse for a picture,
sitting in stark contrast among the human ambition
pleading with the fates that
my girlfriend was in one of these tubes
riding toward her own
personal
hell.

I have too many stories like these.

I have too often seen
the sun rise over skylines,
that destroyer of revelry,
rudely proclaiming my
shame:

You whore for a snort!
You slut for a sniff!

Such language.

I like to think I may make it.
Two months on Tuesday.
Two months dry.
Two months
clean.

But there's a lot of broken glass to sweep
I've made a bit of a mess.

Some casualties were sustained
during the campaign
and
there are some people who don't think too highly of

Yours
Truly,

Artemis.

P.S. poor me,
poor,
poor,
me.

Maybe now your ghost will leave me.

You drove me around town
in that old white Cadillac
and you were always listening to that
terrible
rap music while
complaining about panic attacks
and life is just so
hard.

We'd drive around and
at the slightest hint of traffic
you
were rice on a wedding day
falling to the ground in
a thousand wild
grains.

Meanwhile,
I was neck deep
in court ordered service
and had to listen to it all as
your dog stuck his big,
dumb,
fat head up into
the front seat,
trying to offer his own
two
cents.

Meanwhile,
I'd just gotten out of jail
and the least you could do
was the most you ever would
and you proclaimed yourself
the
hero.

Its really not that you were so bad,
it all just always came with a
price.

You thought that a ride somewhere
somehow deserved great accolade or
constituted endlessly
devoted
love.

Honestly, you could have driven that
big white boat
off a cliff and
I wouldn't have thought
twice.

All I ever asked was that
you showed up
at least when you claimed you would
or,
eventually,
even at all.

So when you packed it in
(surprise surprise)
amidst the gentle crumbling of my sanity,
I thought that,
surely,
after the ensuing agony,
self reflection and
woe is me,
you'd have the common decency
to flush yourself down the drain
of my profound regret and
wasted
time.

Yet there you are,
lingering in the most
inopportune
places.

Somehow,
in your brief time of
residency you
grabbed my sex firmly by its manhood
and have ripped it grimly through
my aching
balls.

Each pound of flesh that
I press beneath my own you
appear dutifully
every
time,

Punctual for once you're
a looming audience and
a most
unwanted
bedfellow.

Each penetration is a menage:
us and
you and
us
together.

There we all are and
I,
the hopelessly addicted animal,
ferociously crave
your
skin.

A man unhinged,
I want to fill the room
with our unholy scent and
sin.

I yearn to spit into your
gaping mouth
as a fistful of you
is pulled toward
hell.

As I begin to push myself inside
the wet envelopment
that defies proper description of:
name -
taste -
smell -
or sensation,
you arrive to mock me and
pulling my eyes toward you
I go numb at the waist.

Until before me you are


DEVOURED


by a submissive and depraved
young creature


BEGGING FOR ME


while I look into your
blissfully pained eyes
gleefully lost in the pure pleasure of
this perversion and


I KNOW


that this is what you wanted from
the beginning and
I give you every inch by
throbbing
inch.


AND FINALLY,
THE CACOPHONY OF
ORGASM AND
FLUIDS!

THE KITTEN GLISTENING BRILLIANTLY,
PAINTED BY NUMBERS
A MILLION SPERM RACING
TOWARD NIRVANA!

TWO TITS!

TANNED STOMACH!

LOVER!

SLAVE!

OUR SADISTIC FLESH
SATISFIED!






(beat)







Awake now.
Eyes open.
Her face.

I Inhale.
Exhale.

Take in stale and
cursed night air,
four sickening walls
ten dead fingers and
ten dead toes,
I hate you in this moment
more than there
are worthy
words to
describe.

In a breathless embrace she
runs her hands over my
sweat slick shoulders and
desperately
presses her breath
into my mouth and
in the distance I hear
the fade of your
lifeless,
taunting
laughter.

Another emission
yours.

Great thief you've won
again.

In the dark I
shut my eyes
and
pray:

Flee from me
unending night
and give me
rest.

A relief from the constant
and cumbersome burden of
you.

Found: From Some Time In 2013

I have lived on both sides of the coin -
I have been good,
even
respectable.
I have also been a thing that you would kick from
your doorstep,
a stray and rabid
dog.

We are always all
just this side
of
madness.

There is nothing poetic about 7 am
pacing the floorboards,
peering from windows,
feeling the terror of a brand new day.
Knowing that in an hour's time they
will be expecting you
to FUNCTION and WORK
without a wink of sleep and full
of poison.

Meth mouthed hookers
with tongues the taste of latex
and sore nostrils are the norm.

No one knows to look at you but
you've seen the depths of depravity and
most would never find their way
back.

I am not sure I will ever be the same
but somehow,
like a roach:
I still
survive.

Where Are You?

It's 11 PM and
I don't know where
you
are.

I don't know
which way you're
facing.

If you're sitting up or
lying
down.

I don't know your address
or your phone
or the color of
your
door.

I don't know if you're
humming over dishes
or whistling a tune while
on a
stroll.

I don't know where you are.

I don't know where
you put it when
it's just
too much to
bear.

I don't know if you laugh
in lush gardens or
if you cry
into knapsacks heavily
weighted
down.

I don't know where you are.

I have forgotten your voice.
I have forgotten your face.

Though I can sometimes

remember

your silhouette on top of mine
riding a riot rhythm straight
to
orgasm.

Now its 11:02 PM

and I still don't know where
you
are.

Tonight I'm thinking

of ADF in the early twos,
forgive that I've forgotten exactly when,
and we drank Red Stripe on the porch and
it was awkward but
wonderful
to be
alive.

And the night was hot and silent and
you were far
too good
for
me.

And I
devoured you.

First lips,
heart
last.

And I never loved you.
And I never loved myself.

And once you came down off the roof
of your Brooklyn apartment
and they sent you away
to a place
you would break to
describe,

you told me that I was bad for you
and I'll forever live with questions

why?

But I've known myself forever and
I don't blame you
at
all.

I look at your pictures;
you're fragile but
happy.

I guess you got what you deserved and
so did
I.

Letter To A Friend Who Won't Stop Whining.

For goodness sake, put down the bottle.

Either that or learn
to keep it mostly to
yourself.

You splatter your pitiful prattling
all over the wall
for everyone to see and in unison
they say,
"poor fella."

Realize this:

The world is mad.

Cat's, like most women, only love you when you feed them.

If you measure yourself by outside adoration
you'll always feel lower than
filth.

There is much magic in a tree branch as its blown gently by
the
wind.

Its more than possible to be alone
in a room that's full of other
lonely people.

For goodness sake, put down the bottle.

Realize,

You probably won't find comfort between a woman's thighs.
It is just as cold there as a year spent alone.

Lies are the current currency of the day but
there is still good out there
in the
world.

Love doesn't have to be a finger on your trigger,
it can be as simple as
a letter just to say
hello.

Understand,
that you're ugly and
nobody else likes you
but that's
ok.

You don't mind you and that's good enough.

And for goodness sake,

put down the bottle.

I don't know why.

I don't know why

the foreman has gone mad,
or the knives are all dull
and the grill only has three
wheels.

I don't know why

Durham was never good enough,
or her taste was always dull
and I slept beside her but
never fell in
love.

I don't know why

ten years went by
like sawdust in sunlight,
and I drank it all
away.

Why I loved her body
but found her conversation
numb,
and I asked her to see me through
the haunting of another lover
that slept
one wall
away.

I don't know why

The self righteous weigh against me
perversions uttered at all hours
while under an influence I struggled
to
control.

I don't know why I'm so self righteous
and don't think perversions uttered
at all hours don't affect
anyone other than
me.


Twelve hours of minutiae
stealing me from me,
leaving nothing but food for
worms
my apologies to
the bard.

Questions with no answer
and barely worth the time,
bullets gloved in velvet
fired deftly by
a silver
tongue.

I'm going to miss you and miss her too,
but unlike her -
I'm leaving
you.

I sit down to change the world but then I get to thinking.

I remember when

the streets were slick on Wilmington
and the lights cast long blue shadows
like the milk of spiders,
luminescent webs,
spare a dollar,
spare a dime.
The sidewalks beating and
breaking -
our feet one door down in a two shot town and
our pockets aching with currency.
Dogs doomed to howl toward
an indifferent moon.
We, injecting ourselves into tin tubes
spun toward the promised land,
heavy metals and poison oak,
snow laden sunrise
in
3...
2..

But all there is now
is rain and a rash
and scars from all the slices.

Its hard to walk when the feet are gone,
Its hard to talk when the tongue is swallowed,
Its hard to sleep when the mind is clear
and it all plays in projection
across the black backside of eyelids.

This is all because
of
you.

We Aren't Who We Were Anymore.

You were a postcard shiny and new
with wishes from somewhere I've never been
your signature steady and lines linked
just
so.

I was a postman and they gave you to me
saying urgent, priority, handle with care.
So I placed you on top of all that I had
so you would never leave my sight
or rip
or tear.

I noticed you throughout the day.
I noticed how you reflected the sunlight
and how your signature was steady
and your lines linked just
so.

I found it hard to focus with you lying there
a rare refreshment in an otherwise routine
day.
I took you out when I stopped to eat
under a tree in an empty park.
Wiping off the occasional smudge as
I thumbed your corners
and
face.

Afterward we went for a walk around the treeline and
I admired your contour and your shape.
You had such smooth texture but
your edges were sharp
and I liked that about you most
of
all.

When it was time again for the task at hand
I placed you on top of all that I had so
you would never leave my sight
or rip
or tear.

I carried you,
I carried you with me
until we were the last two left,
the sun sinking low on
the remnant of our
only
day.

So we turned and walked down
your street
walking hand in hand and
I looked at you a final
time.

I admired your contours and
your shape
then rang the bell -
a special delivery
for
another
man.

You were a postcard shiny and new
with wishes from somewhere I've never been
your signature steady and lines linked
just
so.

I was a postman and they gave you to me.

A change in method, a deviance from form

It strikes me, as I swallow this speckled melatonin, how deeply rooted within myself was a pervasive and dominating
darkness.

Like a color palette crashing to the floor with a resultant explosion of fluids (a spectacularly painted conical updraft), so was I.

A tornado of passions and mood and spun out. The sickening prelude to the dawn's soon

strung out.

Half a face in a reflection, half a voice from tired hand. I let it get the best of me.

I don't rightly know how I'm going to reconcile some of the things that I've done now operating with this sharp-tack mind.

I guess God and I will take a walk.

...

These days, as opposed to those days,

I don't even want the same things that I did when my skin crawled with that damn substance fueled prick.

A thousand needles letting from me blood and flagrant sins.

I can turn around and see it all again.

Never mind where it all went wrong, It was all wrong where it went.

Now where it goes is the only pertinent story.

Barbara Bush died tonight and a nation mourned.

Oh to be so special as to interrupt the regularly scheduled program.

So far I feel that I'll need to send out invitations when I'm taken.

Please RSVP.

Now back to your
regularly scheduled
pro-
gram.

A Rare Love Song

Someone save me I'm smiling.

There must be fires in the poles,
or floods down in hell.
I'm a furred ball in sunlight
a potted plant on the sill,
a hothouse orchid stretching
toward a saccharine
sun.

I woke up grateful.
Especially for all of this
you.

Lifting my low so high via
such gentle arms;
clubs of care,
weapons of clemency.

Levels of deserving are for deities
to decide to dole around.
But I guess someone up there liked me 'cause
I feel you here
just 'bout
all the
time.

I hope you know:

No matter what man you one day cradle
in your weary waved white flag,
know that inside my heart
you'll always
be at
home.

I wanted to write like Shakespeare

But all that came was bathroom stall graffiti.

I'm alright with that.
It's something.

Something left behind as
the caravans cross Mexico
like ants to pirate pies.

And orphaned spies lie flat on their deathbeds
Well gassed by their gods and
countries.

And the iron curtain is hung on our futures
while madchildren with armories
play espionage chess
and knucklebones missiles,
bullies buying all the railroads
and Broadway and
Park
Place.

As the television and
our front rooms blur
and the masses riot for retribution.
A torrid sea of twisted dreams
awash with children's
coffins.

Yet in spite of this
I look around,
and
I
am
satisfied.

Today I made a delicious breakfast
and that was good enough
for
me.

In Case You Were Wondering

I write according to the soundtrack.

I sit and wax poetic
so pretty girls
will read pretty words
and think that I'm pure
magic.

A prophet of predicate
with the answer to why
and where to go from there.

But nobody continues
to write nothing and
that face in the mirror still
can't seem to just
let
it
go.

Mik would chastise me for
latching on-
to what came
before.

But I've been dry since I left and
all this clarity is crushing.
Regrets man, regrets;
this cursed awareness
of how I'm as selfish as
a dog in a
cat
house.

As if to say if I'm not dying
then I have nothing left
to
give.

I'm only best when
I'm grains of sand in open hands
sliding to the floor with
dust and dirt
and swept
away.

I've been up nights drowning
in what ifs:

What if I had been a briefcase fisting,
double-breasted,
upright citizen and
you'd found me
then.

Would that have fit the bill?

Did I just miss the on-ramp as I drove down
the highway
drunk as
hell?

Think of all the North Face fleece I
could have bought for Tanner,
Constance, Madison, and
Tad.

Wedding poses instead of mugshots framed
in gentle repose
against reclaimed driftwood armoires
and vases full of
seashells.

But instead ol' pops was behind the bars
after he'd been inside them for too
long.

But then all of that beauty -
that all night honest beauty,
I wouldn't know a damn thing about
the bottom.

Nothing to say at cocktail parties,

"No thank you, I've
had
enough."

Of all my concrete lovers I
think I'll miss you most of
all.

Thirteen three sixty five's.
Five thousand nights.
Five thousand deaths.

Maybe one day they'll give me a star on Glenwood
carved into the pavement for posterity.
"Here once walked a cautionary tale."
Immortality is so
humiliating.

For a time the
crisscross of the Southern sky
lights and Oaks
were my canopy in a modest jungle.

For awhile I
fed the masses or made them dance.
I gave them courage by the mugful
and maybe made babies or beatings -
either way.

But my shoulders were heavy
under all
of that constant sunrise
that found us smoking
"what have we done?"
Walks of shame
and shudder.


Yet forever I'll be haunted
by those porches,
and those bedposts
and those confessions,
and the daughters
and their eyes.

It rips me up and sideways
a part of me is dead.
The last bastion of abandon
doomed to assimilate.

But before I go
and roll credits on the film:

I love you.

I love you.

Five thousand nights,
Five thousand times.

I love you.

Nothing new.
The world is still on fire and
I'm still not ok.

Living on borrowed time
with borrowed bones
chasing bedsheets, bumps, and
bourbon.

I still fall in love so deeply
that I can hardly
breathe.

I'm still terrified of how
everything makes me
feel.
(You know what I mean)

I eat sleep aids like tic tacs
so I spend less time
telling people how much they mean or
what I want
to do to
them.

I've vomited vices but still never found
the dreams I swallowed when
Josh and
my unborn child
died too
soon.

I still think of dying
more than I'd like to
admit.
But people are liars and
so am
I.

Just another day in paradise
living the dream and
surviving the
nightmare.