The Ephemeral Catch

Keep on eluding capture,
Carrying on in that mischievous pixie way.
One of these days passion will outrun reason,
Subsequently cornering you for good.

These marathon trials are slinking towards an end,
We’ll meet finally after this long-weathered tempest.
Perhaps you’ve felt it as well,
That aching in your soul that speaks incompletion.

Hurtling towards the median Delphi world center,
We’ll collide in the torrent of all we’ve repressed;
Unleashing the deluge of our passion
Loud enough to make the thunder quail .

We’re teetering the edge of temporality,
Walking the blade’s edge of oblivion,
Either swaying ledge, our evanescent fairytale ending;
Rending our primalest natures enough to stop time.

You’ve thwarted the truth with flouting lies,
Denial so acute its tattooed your soul.
This moment is acquiescence,
These legs have given out on running for you—

about face

White flag’s waving the hide-n-seek defeat,
Nothing left to find except the verdict inside.

Spiked Coffee

We’re swirling ‘round the vapors,
peeking through the looking glass.
Hoping for the world we want to reflect back,
holding the coffee breaths deep in our hearts.

Sugary sweet pull of me to you,
tug-of-war conversation.
Burning up these guarded facades,
exulting in the melding of minds.

Honing in on the scene,
watching each beat pulse symmetry.
Finding ease in every word we speak,
isn’t this how it should always be?

Psychology of Fatherhood

There’s a vacancy in most guys concerning the topic of having children. It’s as though this void fills the place in us that mutes all desire to carry on the seed. There is no honest desire for it except when coupled with the opposite sex. Like two parts of a whole, yet without the other half the desire is moot. Part of it lies in this visceral appeal to see this significant woman in our life carrying our child. It’s this inexplicable contentment that goes with knowing that another person is incubating a part of us. Practically narcissism at it’s finest, yet there’s some magnetic force there that seems to pull the gravity of your life towards it. No matter how catastrophic the notion of reproduction truly is, it’s as though one can’t help but to succumb to their primal instincts when the situation arises. Alas, the moral of the tale is that unlike the feminine desire to care and nurture(the motherhood gene), men are more than content to exist without children, yet we fall prey to the construct of relationships, and thus our fatherhood gene materializes.

Business Thoughts

You’re a cute little number
who thinks she knows best.

Talking men teasingly
into a flustered mess.

You’re in the business
of wrapping guys around your fingers.

This is the impending stock market crash.

Time-Worn True

When the days grow short,
And the sun begins to set on our youth.
When gravity sets in
And our youthful faces becomes a distant memory,
It’s not our fading beauty that sustains us-
Rather it’s the glow we get when we lock eyes.
The years that brand our souls,
The shared memories that give us life.
As we grow stooped and gray,
There’s no dismay in our hearts,
For love is more than our shrinking bodies could show.
When time no longer permits us to walk the paths of youth,
We smile fondly at what we shared,
And look forward to what remains.

Though my knees may not be able to bend
Like they did that day long ago,
When I knew gazing up at you
That you were the only one I’d ever want.
There’s not a day that goes by,
When my heart isn’t fit to burst
With my ever-growing love for you.
So when the end comes
And signals our time is done,
Then we shall look back smiling,
knowing our love outlasted time.

Self-Immolation

Wake up in the hazy disorientation;
lips swollen from frenzied drunken kisses,
fervor renewed in this stranger’s life of living-
pain trickles in as a stern reprimand.

Memories are half-developed snapshots;
more signs and feelings than true imagery.
Piecing together the debauched mosaic,
decadence woefully heralds in the day.

Inner conflict begins in remembrance of sin;
primal passions loosed in wild abandonment.
Time to stay torn as day smolders to night,
‘till the flames stoked again in futile respite.

Following A Strand Of Thought

Taking the baby steps, its odd at first. We’re two dogs sniffing each other out, savoring the taste of difference; the allure of exotic mysteriousness. We’ll start and stop, stutter our way through the bumbling task of getting to know each other. Excavating ourselves for our common interests; rejoicing that we hold parts of each other dear already. Then we’ll start the motor mind a’ thinking. Start imagining the possibility of this scenario, we’ll time warp to the future that never is, but could possibly be. Then we’ll get scared because it could possibly be right, yet the potentiality for wrong hangs over us like a shadow. Now we’ll begin to doubt this whole charade, letting the flood peek through the cracks to overwhelm the tsunami of emotion bubbling through our ephemeral skin. We’re fighting the whirlpool of desire; testing the scale of passion versus reason, and knowing which losing side we’ll always pick. It’s time to start cliff diving; leaving all semblance of safety far, far behind us. We’re strangers now, two kindred souls embarking on the voyage of tumultuous adoration. Sometimes we’ll substitute love for hate, then we’ll make up faster than the day sets; making things almost right again. By this point we’re forgetting the awkwardness; we’re shiny new toys testing out all our amazing kinks. We’ll love most of ‘em, and hold our tongue for the more unsavory bits, but we’ll be so blustered by this new font of emotion that we’ll let it see us through. After awhile we’ll begin to wonder what we were ever thinking. How could talking take us so far? We’re strangers now like we were way back when, but this time the awkwardness hurts, and the mystery is all but gone. We’re stumbling around punch-drunk on the eggshells of a former love; there’s nothing endearing about where this is going. Eventually our names evoke loathing in the other; we’re like rotten eggs to the wilting plant of our relationship. Slowly choking the sense out of this reality we’ve fabricated, as if we should’ve known all along that our collision course was set far ahead of our foresight; the fleets burning now, our ships getting swallowed whole by the maw of our innumerable pockmarked issues. Filling faster than we could’ve ever anticipated, our love drowns beneath the waves into the black unknown of memory---subsequently leaving us as the shattered picture frame of once innocent bliss.

The Bluff of Luck

There’s a quiet desperation on your face,
Waiting for those numbers to spell a fortune.
That rigor mortis stance mocks tension;
You’re a monument to broken luck.

Necks outstretched scouring the board,
Eyes straining for the correct numerical alignment.
Tearing yourself apart from within,
Fanatical frenzy in the thrill of the win.

Yet the numbers get lost in the sea of digits,
Always off by a hairsbreadth.
Left floundering at the tide of misfortune,
Circling the drain of this self-sustained torture.

Tremors begin wracking your body,
You’re blazing through the internal mathematics.
Each tremulous shiver in the misplaced bet,
Combustion looms in the abyss of loss.

Life spans measured in the course of your wallet,
Dying slowly with each parasitic donation.
Selling off the organs of your dollar-bill soul,
Consumed voraciously in the gnawing hell of want.

Mere scraps of humanity remain to drag away,
Dejected in the public debacle of your moral bankruptcy.
Time to wander the streets in the cozy coma of dreams,
Soaring high on the winning numbers of gambling greed.

The Tar Barrel

Excavating the moss-sheathed tar barrel.
Child hands clawing in infamy at viny bonds,
uncovering hidden treasure beneath the fronds.
Exulting its freedom in our guileless carol.

Mystical crusaders in our grail-esque search.
Proudly heralding our auspicious prize,
buoyant to burst;the simplicity of our lives.
Never for a second could reality besmirch.

Only ever was sticky, century old tar.
“X-Marked Spot" moments were eternal,
succulent sunrise lives forever diurnal.
No threads of fate could ever mar.

Southern Road

Traversing the bleak highway wilderness,

Lightning orchestras tolling overhead.

Deluge downpours encompass us—trapped

Amidst the southern heartland nation.



Darkness falls heavy,

vampiric blackness suffocates the foreground.

Illumination

flickering headlights gnashing through the travel storm.



Construction circus arrives with the festival lights,

Beacons, hazmat warnings bursting through the onyx.

Sunlight’s dying rays linger in the sky,

Ebbing slowly from chalky grey, to midnight cobalt.

Shuttling on, weaving the tapestry among

Eighteen wheeled giants.



Carry on the worn true, road time adventure tune.

Each tire thrum, seductive window rattle,

Every staticy radio tweak, and jeering wiper swing;

The Southern Road Collective

Emotionally Comatose

Know how the tide flows,
every second ebbing similarly–
death of spontaneity.

Washed up dilapidated,
mere carcass body shivering-
exhausted in the burden of existing.

Mundanities on the wind,
whispering eternal stagnation-
broken record world envelopes silence.

Staring until the glaze sets in,
eyes shutter in lifeless repose-
each blink bleeding colors out.

Grey Silence

Legacy Of Our Teens

Sorry for the way we were,
dysfunctional entities coexisting farcical.
Catastrophes in the mirrorworld
where happiness coats wrenching sadness.

We’ll blame each other
for the chemistry that enslaved us.
Turn topsy turvy minds;
mere kids in the love grind.

Shallow love fueled it,
our parasitic interdependency.
Loving for the sake of the l-o-v-e,
then forgetting what we spelled.

We weren’t worth the effort,
the meticulous bomb-planting disaster.
Sorry for being an accomplice,
a willing participant in our destruction.

We’ll try to remember nice things,
non-existent memories.
Utter random pleadings of reverie cells
aching for substance-
affirmation of a war not vainly fought.

The Ice Tray

The ice tray remains unfilled-
unfulfilled
gaping chasm; our domestic void.

Every cellular cube stays bone dry,
black holes
thawed out refuse spells demise.

A line of empty graves-
ghost town invades the hearth,
waiting to be filled.

Scorched Tomato Earth

Squashed tomatoes ‘till juices stained shoes,
Trumping ‘round the farmland wilderness.
Summer sky scalding child eyes,
Running amuck in exultant sunny exuberance.

Harvesting the soul of the world;
back breaking sweat of ancestors past.
Toiling in the gathering of life,
Microcosm child mind.

Lay flat on the earth
Sinking slowly into the loamy,
Diffusing the youthful radiance-
Absorbing the nutrient of being.

Mantra of Resurgence

The sore neck pains from years past rise up from the bubbling muck of muscle fibers to plague me another day. Titling to and fro like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, thoughts sway in accordance; seeking refuge from the errant spin cycle mind. Minds all jumbled from being unable to understand the native language. Sessions where English mutates into an amorphous conglomerate of letters that form hazy images of words–in turn making no sense at all. As though I’m reading letters glued together, and reconstruction of letter-to-word-to-meaning is all but wishful thinking. Calamity further ensues as the head is overworked in both physical and intellectual anguish. Worn thin by ineptitude and arthritis, days run long like Indian summers; forever dragging the heat into the ‘ember months. Yet all is not lost, no matter how much the lament crescendos on the heart strings, for there is solace in the new day. Salvation in the hope of tomorrow, and the humbling truth that I’ll at least be there to see it.

The Hazards in The Sick Rose

I spent three hours analyzing a sick rose today. Not the actual flower, but the metaphor of it; dying love. I delved into the meaning of it, the implications of love actually dying, of it being a living breathing entity that is capable of getting sick. Part of that analysis was gauging my own reaction to this notion, oddly enough I was not impervious—depression set in at the memories that were coaxed forth. That withering image of once bountiful crimson was successful in conjuring up the raw reveries of passions past. As though that mere image in words (it was a poem) transported me back, and forced me, for however short a period it was, to relive the painful memories of falling out of love. Slingshotting back to the moment where you know love was no longer a possibility, and was more and more turning into a liability of your emotional capacity; in staying in the dying embers of this relationship you were susceptible of infecting yourself with whatever was decaying your union.

It was a melancholy couple of hours as I was forced to exorcize the demons within, contemplate them in an academic vein, and yet fail at staying wholly objective. Parts came undone, the guard was lowered and spilled onto the page, and perhaps in these moments of weakness, confession was truly possible. The raw wound of the soul is open to the air of the people, and the bandage is long in coming. May the infection refrain from taking up residence–if only to let the lovely disaster of it all remain.

Rumpled Sheets

Tousled linens in the corpse of your bed,
a mosaic of disharmony .

Shrouded in the crumpled spread,
hidden terrors jailbreak the dream scape-
painting despair where your head rests.

Thrashing pillow cases,
wild thumping limbs in dangling dances-
fear seeps into dormant bones;
the puppeteer of nightmares.

War zone becomes this sleepless sanctuary-
bathes in disquietude the nocturnal disorder.

The Voyage

Solid granite lips
part the sea of your hips-
to weather the storm within.

Navigate the rough
arm the deck for war-
caulk up the leaks
to keep it all afloat.

Sail to promise land home
deep in the cavernous expanse-
light shines hope
to guide this ship to pass.

Traverse the canvas of your body
the ebb and flow of its niches-
this uncharted land I lay claim
to flourish the desire of our wishes.

The Dominion of Commitment

Some days I understand your standoffish-ness,
others I’m left floundering in discombobulation.
More often than not I’m a victim of your whiplash;
the forever shifting tides of your emotions.

Some days you tell me that this is eternal,
others you scorn the notion of our union.
More and more it seems I’m the king in your chess ploy,
and your deigning when to mate me.

Some day I’ll walk away from it all,
though can any other fit quite so snug?
More realistically it’s a juncture of natural disasters-
we’re just content on the scope of the damage.

Tell me one day we’ll rebuild the ruins-
be archeologists and discern the meaning of it all.
Make me believe the years didn’t flutter like camera shutters-
that this snapshot wasn’t all for naught.

The Marriage That Never Was

Dear,

I seem to spend my life missing you
Continents separate our hearts
Fickle honey words get us stuck-
Bridge the distance in our thoughts.
Each pen stroke writhed in love,
Punctuate the misery of our leagues apart.

We ache terribly for the verses we write,
Sheathed in metaphor that forever blights.
Darling, doomed to our dolorous doldrums-
Crafting love to span black hole cosmos,
Each missive mired in miasma abstractions.
Know this and only this;
Stoically we pen our perseverance.

Sent off into the whirlpool world,
Sheer chance allows your reception-
Safeguard me so (this precious verse),
For each beat of the heart pulsates within.
Slaves to the distance of our souls,
Faith remains in the hands that now hold-
We exist in the words we mold.

Yours,

Duality of Endearment

An odd pair!
Mysterious coupling of souls-
polarizing opposites that seem whole.

Speaking lies for truths,
exchanging "yes's" for "no's"-
irrevocably twined for better or worse.

Bartering love for hate,
confusing smothering for space-
in this case it couldn't be any other way.

The Memory

He sat back as a smile broke upon his face,
As though it were a wave
Washing to shore forgotten memories.

It was alarming how such thoughts can escape hibernation
And invade his mind with such force.
Though curiosity questions the timing
Of such recollections, the smile remains.

The room wavered before him as this
Memory coaxed him to walk this path once more.
Ensnared by memory’s pull, he gave in.

He was transported to the most unassuming of nights.
Ironically, these are the nights that seemed destined for change.

He found himself walking down that trail again...

It was late as dawn began crawling ever closer
In an effort to illuminate another summer day.
Possibility filled him, it was next to him, holding his hand.
He soared high, this was it, this is how it started.

Its as though they were the only two people on earth,
With only the trees bearing witness to something sacred.
He was amazed, who knew this could be so easy?
Conversation flowed effortlessly.
It’s as if their minds melded together, joining two halves,
Two lovers long lost.

The hazy twilight grew brighter, matching that sparkle in her eyes.
He wanted to stay like this forever, but he was afraid to ruin it.
Could this be the end, would this ever happen again?
But really, would this ever be the same after tonight?

He stopped, gazing at her with such intensity
Its as though he were trying to will this love to blossom instantaneously.
Maybe she knew it as well, this could be love, it really could-
But he just didn’t know what to do.
He ached to kiss her, to make her understand this longing,
Yet fear paralyzed him, though his gaze never wavered.

Their eyes locked in a moment of star-crossed eternity-
Then it was shattered by the impending dawn,
And the sound of distant voices.

Reality was crashing down on them too soon,
He needed to hold on to this feeling...
He knew the inevitable was near, that they would have to part,
And therefore putting an end to perhaps the best night of his life.

The sound of footsteps announced their arrival, it was them.
He looked at these faces, those of his closest friends
And he thought they knew; this was something special.

The ride home was a blur.
She was with him, upon his lap
And his heart was fit to burst.
He was torn at the seams.

Th end was here, they had arrived,
And this was his last shot.
Naturally her back was turned toward him
And he found himself willing her to turn around.
This was it, do or die.

But the unexpected occurred as she proceeded to walk out,
Leaving him crestfallen at her silent goodbye.
As he resigned himself for defeat he looked up-
Only to see her whirl around, poke her head in the car,
And place the most tender, fleeting kiss upon his lips
Before turning back and leaving without a word.

She walked away towards the sun and disappeared into fire.
Dawn’s bright fury enveloped her as he tried to follow her with his eyes.
It blinded him, bringing him to tears
And for the first time he felt truly alive.

The vision blurred as reality swam slowly back into view.

That smile was much broader now,
How odd it was that this memory enveloped him so completely.
He could still feel the tingle of her lips upon his,
And the way it made his insides dance wildly.

He hadn’t seen her after that night
Because he knew it wouldn’t be the same;
It was just one of those moments you can never recapture.

He didn’t know then why they never spoke again,
But today it reminds him of the fickleness of life and love.
More importantly it showed him that when you least expect it,
Another can fill this vacancy within your heart, only to leave it just as quickly.

A ray of light from the dawning sun shines upon him,
And the smile begins to slide off his face.
It was the closest thing to love he ever had;
This fleeting, long-forgotten memory.

The Simulacrum

Sighing in the car, windows up suffocating in the inefficiency of fumbling through the mental dictionary only to realize there’s no control in the random spouting of letters erupting all rambunctiously from fingers to keys to the no longer blank screen in front of the face. Heats emanating from somewhere, devilishly hot, Dante’s breathing down the neck waggling the one way ticket to the infinite lyrical purgatory, and it’s so tempting and disgusting at the same time. The inferno self is aching reverently to be taken for granted, understood for nothing less than the basest parts would allow.

Keys are smacking like dominos on the earth, producing sounds and words that eventually all ring out into utter black hole silence; where a brainwave hits the lead, mutating kryptonite thoughts into resolute deafness. Each stuttering of the imagination stalls short of fruition, poisoning the road behind with its inability to sprout the earth and reach towards heavenly skies. Instead we’re in the loamy death, eternal darkness that is the catacomb of creation; pleading with ourselves, this earthy prison of jelly cells and neurons working together to illicit the overwhelming pain. Wondering if it tastes any better in the cellular world than rapturous joy; probably not, yet these mental taste buds are on the permanent sour of inactivity---always yearning to break free of some ethereal barrier to voyage to the illusive elysian fields that lie yonder. Never knowing full well that the portrait of the artist lies in the viscera of each heart pumping blood, and the brain catching it all ravenously to fuel the painstaking trials of thought creation.

Drenched by this time, bogged down in the soiled excess emanating from the verbose physicality pent up in the metal box of the world. All for naught in the assiduous search for worth in the worthless world where real objects get the junk toss in the closet, and the insubstantialness of the world rules us all like matrix slaves. Breaking out is never enough, the outright rebellion of the tethered soul is necessary for any semblance of coalescing to occur. Rather we lay scattered to the winds, the fragments of ourselves forever alien simulacrums of who we once were. Too long in the winded vein, lungs spewing carbon dioxide, protesting the oxygen sweetness in reason; shame the diaphanous sheen of our lives doesn’t necessitate such simple rejuvenation.

Song of the Scorner

The senselessness of it all,
spiteful utterances driven with forces guttural.
Tearing the flesh, searing the soul,
sandpaper worn words destroying them whole.

Cathartic transference; a transgression,
against any and all that live contented.
Howl savagely for what you’ve scorned,
time pulls the carpet from underneath it all.

Reviler; humanity’s passion hater,
tearing down from heights unattainable--
the same old plight of sad old mind.
Jealously in the happiness you’ll never find.

The Playground of Memory

Rewind me back to the infantile youth days, where sugar was my sustenance and TV came with warnings not to sit to close (ere spoil my eyes). Where I never listened to anything at all, and Saturday morning cartoons were complete and utter euphoria. Waking up to bagels and juice, loving the weekend and its absence from school, I’m aching even eighteen years later to understand how life was so simple. Those school bus rides home were a world unto themselves; filled with the promise of afternoon snacks and general child chatter of the latest craze. I’m losing each second in reverse, mitosis rescinding me backwards as every cell aches to be 3ft tall and yearning for buck teeth tooth fairy souvenirs. Days where sleep was an actual burden from the joy of living, of actually playing around all day---everyday for the sure excitement of being alive. Turn back the dial to the fairy tales of it all. Holiday’s, birthdays, celebrations that were vibrant parades exploding through your veins, to that wild beating young rascally heart. It makes me sadder than I can ever comprehend that I never get to go back, and more so that I never realized how beautiful it was.

Temptations of Insight

Rollicking back to those epiphany moments;
those clarity-filled seconds of salvation.
Where attaining your desires was quite simply
having the courage to pursue them.

Revelry consumes, yet oft confuses–
as with the truth comes how to manage it.
Ere we get lost amongst the brain waves,
only to be slaves of these yet-to-come future days.

Though in some ways we crave this edenistic apple;
that catastrophe of knowledge–
if only to tempt ourselves with feigned action,
mere doppelgangers pursuing passion.

It comes back to initiative, the gory mess of fulfilling.
These instances; those precious uprisings of courage,
riding the crest of our inner workings,
only bring contentment in the trial of the search–
where the real truth is the only one worth knowing.

“Ist and Ism”

Telepathic schism
mind, body.

Human bodies morph, faces melt
labels emerge.

He is this, who is that, we is this–names are prisons.
Walls of self
contained ambitions, desires, drives.
You is this.
Believe in that, solutions found in foundation cracks.

Answers ephemeral trick these minds,
find buried treasure truth in cake mold names.

The bakery is open!

Sweat shops pump out, conforming identity dough.
Pliable medium of suffix kings,
flesh face lost, ideals reform–

Marrow raw philosophies of ist and ism,
winds of plague, crick crack
truths of self in wavering vision.

The Unfortunate 50 %

You’re embittered old foes,
versed in the rote battles of years past,
ripping scabs open at a second’s notice,
hating what you swore to always love.

Booming screams resounding in dead space-
the coffin of your marriage, you’re digging the plot.
Frenzy induced hysteria in an effort to suffocate;
choke the blood from your twined doomed hearts.

Just put a butterfly bandage on it,
kiss the hurt to postpone it.
You’ll just start up again for the love of it,
sadistic pleasure in ripping clean the bandage.

One of these days you’ll both be hoarse,
mutes in the agony of your existence;
Maybe this time you could both try listening–
but you’d be too lonely with hatred missing.

Varvitsa

Walking the rubble-strewn earthy path,
winding its way in a maze of foliage.
Shifting pebbles to arise dusty fumes,
Aegean breeze caressing the cheek.

Arrive at the dilapidated soccer field,
parched ground paints the lines of play.
Goals exist in mere skeleton posts,
desolation arises in Delphic mid-fields.

Back to the Path

Traversing the mountainous rugged terrain,
glimpsing pure rustic infinity.
Rooted in place as motherland imbues veins;
profound rightness engulfs it all.

Ascend further as day slowly sinks,
equinox looms in sweat-coated sheen.
Gazing fully at the masterpiece of origin,
as sun tattoos its radiance to the retinas.

Trials in the metamorphosis of experience,
emerging tatterdemalion (genius baked wisdom).
Saturated fully, Grecian blood flows strong,
proudly heralding its son home.