Victory of the People

Minor Threads

2012-02-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

          A lot of people overlook the little moments, the minor threads that comprise the overarching tapestry of two people’s mosaic. Hidden within those minute moments is the amalgamation of the heart’s journey. Eroded by Time’s capacity to distance and blur, the subtle smile or clasping hand; the puckish kiss or fleeting gaze—or the simple words that outline the unforeseen path. Whatever it may be, it is the coalescing of these fragments that exist in the everyday—it is these moments that we must preserve.
          It was the witching hour—before dawn reared it rosy head—as we flew back East. Body drowsy, mind inflamed, I doubt the details could ever escape. I wonder if we knew it was our numbers that collided within the great cosmic lottery. Raw with the feel of it all, two lonesome specs in the primordial orbit of life, our routes irrevocably altered.
          On days like this the details surge within, threatening to commandeer the present. On the worst of days, they are the embers within the darkness staving off the void. Perhaps we are the only two that can ever fully immerse ourselves in them—like some secret Elysium within our minds.
          Don’t ever disregard the persistence of memory, for it endures above all else. Both the foundation and fuel, a shared past is soil ripe with promise. The tribulations of the tempest days make its fruition all the sweeter, as this harvest is wrought from endless compromise. Re-forged in the image of perseverance, this harvest weathers the slow-burn of distance, the suffocating miasma of silence, the insidious trickle of uncertainty. It survives like the towering Redwood sentinels of old, through sheer force of will, roots bunkered deep, weathering the fray as it’s meant to do.
          These collections of little moments amount to more than the sum of its parts: a sprawling monument in the face of Life’s thousand little wars. It is this that we have created together; that with each subsequent day we continually create. Amidst the sea of decay and disdain, this beacon shines ever brighter, bringing forth hope of the fabled infinite sunrise. I solemnly swear with whatever power these words may hold that I shall bring it to you—the horizon everlasting.
          These words are only that, words. Yet they are the conduit for reclaiming the minor threads of our past, present, future. I take this moment to leave you with the image at the epicenter: a broken watch, frozen at 7:10, in the soft morning light of our first true moment.
          I love you.

Uniformity

2012-02-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

Night is the same:
the dream disconnecting.
A stop-light of thought,
an errant hope.

Dreams are the same:
the possibility withering.
A corrupted fantasy,
idealism blistering.

Youth is the same:
the impossible infinity.
A renegade heart,
imploding dignity.

Love is the same:
the cyclic mendacity.
A perfumed tongue,
rotting sincerity.

The tethering
nocturnal phantoms
bountifully scar.

Resignation Sublimated

2011-12-09T17:35:00.000-08:00

Rain drops riotous:
dead weight of night stifling sunrise—
gory dread of Day’s commencement.

The ole pre-work resignation:
Ambition restructured
Hubris in remission
Hope diminished

Rain drops of another time,
lead one to believe this storm
will pass.
That the sun shall always reemerge victorious
—minor setback—
upon the meteorological war board.

Past patterns reveal
the flaw inherent in complacency—
the idealism of indecision overwhelming
before the World’s voracious orbit

…as if this giant blender of celestial matter
were pureeing us all
into some cosmic, proletarian
gruel.

Ambition Restructured

2011-12-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

Fate’s free-will is a deaf-mute
in celestial matters of
choice.

Proverbial Pandora,
bad twin
to metaphysical matters of
destiny.

Choice is the mirage,
lustily perpetuated—
the Shangri-La of deception
siphoned from Ambition’s heedlessness.

Ambition’s wayward beacon
gnaws riotously upon
the kindle of temptation—
enacts the gauntlet,
scours the flesh:
a parasitic wish-monger.

Imagine a restructuring
—a reconstruction—
of fallacy gone awry.
Of a dream idealized,
turned caustic by Desire’s
instability.

A regression to rags!
Take up the Tatterdemalion mantle;
rising from the rubble,
the defeated proletarian masses
drunk on self-imposed marginalization—
the pariah kings
here to incite the coup
on Ambition’s totalitarian rule.

Hubris bequeathed:
may the credo of tatters
liberate.

The Rabble Unraveled

2011-11-16T18:40:00.000-08:00

Unwind
Slowly breathe the dandelion dust
sent skyward—
the rapier of sentience blurred out
in constant conscious efforts.

Unwind
The Day’s toll extracts desire,
pummels passion to pitiable dust.
The sole savior of Reality’s ruthless scythe:
the undying flutter inside.

Unwind
The slow stutter within your mind
—the rage— crescendo building,
Sense losing all sentience
amidst the torrent of nonsensical
emotion.

Unwind
Time is the wiliest thief,
the cut-purse supreme:
a monger of illicit truths.
The invariable avalanche of youth
roars riotously— but in times so few.

Unwind
At Day’s break
the faithful drone of monotony
succeeds in awaking
the stifled rebellion,
the hellion of exploration—
silently dying within the tethers of duty.

Throttled Zenith

2011-10-16T08:13:00.000-07:00

Death is but the beginning
of the end:
the chapter unfinished.
Love undiminished,
a temporary hiatus
of existence.

Somewhere the cosmos weep,
Mortality’s cruel discrepancies –
tears birthed from misrecgonized immortality.

If only
imperviousness throbbed beneath skin,
perhaps bones and broken wills would never exist.
Time is but the sand diminishing,
the legacy we birth.
With every infinitesimal second of genius—
existence thrums in those moments of creation.

Farewell,
for Life is the act of seizing,
a transitive verb unceasing.
Breathe but the hint of loneliness,
the struggle of coping
in the unrelenting war-time of being:
never alone.

Effin Attenuation

2011-10-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

Cold
wood flowers

shiver

early above

Purple
Song Creek.

Carpentry within Cognitive Monochromia

2011-10-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

Time strains credulity,
restrains the mire of neutrality—
when explosive compounds called Desire
regenerate on notions of expansion,
the material propulsion of necessity
shall rue the day of temperance:
wreathing all in miasmic mendacity.

Words suffice
within the lovely vice
of intelligentsia.
A moment of repose,
bespoken of cantankerous woes
unearths wisdom
hidden
amidst voracious calamities.

Let diseases win,
a contagion of kin,
eradicating dignity
with false precision.
The vindictive decisions
of pragmatic prisms
reside in dogmas outdated
—carpenters uncouth and jaded—
will resurrection upon a brighter hue,
one bereft of antediluvian idiocies—
a pure epiphany
of unfettered dignity.

Time permits a momentary ignorance,
reclaim it
or indulge the baleful withering.

Amorous Cartagena

2011-08-30T20:47:00.000-07:00

Moonlight,
a slow trickle of desire
rousing embers from this vantage.

Fortress walls entomb Elysium,
warding off
corrosive cosmopolis.

A wanton lust for movement—
explosion within the moment:
Experience’s shrapnel
embedding irrevocably.

Colombian Temperaments

2011-08-30T20:25:00.000-07:00

Brisk is the aftermath,
the afterbirth of soiled sweat:
Cartagena’s huskily jeweled breath,
Monteria’s unassuming, all-consuming
swelter—

Bogota heralds relief,
reprieve in boreal breeze—
thrumming madly
in the Incessant hive of activity.

       Sprawling ravenously,
       sky’s scraped haphazardly,
       amidst a decadence unknown—
       ruins anachronistic
       but for the well-worn acclimation
       into modernity.

A cacophony seems arcane
In retrospect,
yet the distance of digestion
allows clarity to fine-tune
—dissect & demarcate—
the influx of experience.

The Broken Prophecy of Ocher Manacles

2011-07-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

It is time:
time for war
war against the shackles of orange aprons.
War against the cerebral comatosity,
war against death for the dollar
for the blood curdling hours
of shame, despondence, misanthropy.
War against the self-immolating properties of stasis,
of a slow burn inertia of listless ambition
of paper knowledge worthless of the green paper bled for it.
War against myopic visions of compliance,
of spineless acquiescence and willing ignorance
of suffocating potential stifled under normalcy.
War against the system of thought imprisoning desire,
for the fabricators of impossible dreams and boundless entitlements,
for the stage of birth and death–-the iron-clad roles inhabited–-
stuck within the strata of ennui.
War against the fictitious lines demarcating a sense of self-indulgent self-importance,
of tempestuous bouts of lie after lie, intravenously fed through cancerous multimedia.
War against the master-plan gone awry,
against the simpleton prophecy of a nation
birthed in idealism and sustained by it.
War for war’s sake,
for a change impossible,
for a change unfathomable,
for a change straddling the precipice of ultimatum
where deplorability is the harvest reaped.

Of Infatuations Past

2011-06-23T17:28:00.000-07:00

How you shrouded me in doldrums.
Heartstrings riotously off-key,
fabricating amor, masquerading sincerity.

Half-felt fancies of time-devoured innocence:
trails of truths quartered, honesty unknowable.
Sputtering sparks of affection
precariously swaying
kissing the cusp of adulthood’s cold introspect.

You taught me more about loss than
a million tragic romances ever could.
Two souls enraptured and disinterested
—volatility incarnate—
pitiful flings,
sentenced to simmer infinitely
on the afterburner of indifference.

Battered and broken,
an ego run the gauntlet,
—affection indefinitely castled—
faith destroyed long enough
to be convincing.

Yet hope arrived,
blurring past misfortune into
distant cardiac scars—
the calligraphy of your love
scribing promise anew.

Equations

2011-06-16T13:48:00.001-07:00

Try half as much
as you complain,
you’ll double the success
of your last failure.

Effort is desire divided,
multiplied by perseverance;
a line of best fit
in convoluted algorithims.

A hypothesis is but an answer unproved,
a solider untested.
The war begins on your command,
waiting on blood-shed experience.

Paumanok Descending

2011-06-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

Silence is the underworld
rippling through a heart,
the jumpstart at day’s break—
a foghorn cacophony
an earthy drone.

Of Weights and Constrictions.
Anvils three-tiered
seducing fathoms:
sunken Hope plays Faith’s counter-weight—
an inveterate buoyancy existentially tolled.

The 51st star
amidst fiery plasma:
a happenstance afterthought
a glacial memorandum.

Where phantoms breed lust
through Gatsby dreams.
Capital Kings
domineering seas,
gilding coasts
In the shadow of
Primordial City.

Weaned on carcinogens
of immovable strata
nourished by dystopian seeds.

A harvested inheritance
despoiled by opulence.
Multiformity left to breed ravenously
on bedrock beds
bled of vitality.

A screw counter-sunk
to a corroded core,
magnetically coaxed
to return root-ward.
Paumanok
you sink towards reclamation,
ushered along by loadstone
indiscretions.

Starting out from you
Is a requisite door—
a beleaguered monument diminishing,
capsizing amidst its illustrious throes.

Sink we together
Tethered
Expiring towards a watery throne?

The Waning Opiate

2011-06-01T15:33:00.001-07:00

Happiness
A drug depleting ?
Pacemaker’s metronome droning:
Whirring wearily
In the uncanny matrix of beats.

Every road
In forever loamy wood
Diverges heretical:
A precipice gift
Of endless meander.

Unbidden at best:
A false ebullience
Promulgating deliverance.
Sovereign to the last
Idealistic edicts

Passed
Cajoled
Coerced

Numbness befits
Myopic transcendence.

Stargazing

2011-06-01T14:38:00.001-07:00

Struggle and settle,
We all do.
Search and search,
For little joys
For stolen happiness
For armor against
Reality’s sobering taint.

We all do,
Fumble and fall.
Melancholia wants company,
Needs time to conquer
Needs you to suffer
Needs weakness to appeal
To permanently cripple.

Overcome and succeed,
We all do.
Relish the pain,
It emboldens
It empowers
It reinforces
How excruciating victory can be.

The Epistemology of Heresy

2011-05-20T16:28:00.001-07:00

Faith is the lie you told yourself to remember–
Times fickle, forgotten
bereaved, time-swallowed
despondent

Faith is the truth keeping you up at night–
lies of omnipotence
endless scriptures of conjecture
myopic

Faith is the facade powering the motor of the world–
dogmas of politics corrupt
agendas heretical
ignorant

Faith is knowledge for the disenfranchised–
power for authoritarians and aristocrats
illusions for tethered minds
Tantalus

Faith is guilt coercing morality–
barricading banality
obfuscating clarity
disillusion

Faith is the labyrinth–
ensnaring logical thought
tantalizing endless ambrosia
pestilence

Faith is the greatest trick

A Transgressive Diagnosis

2011-05-10T12:11:00.000-07:00

Late shift begins:
Death by repetition,
A re-worked dementia—
Standard
Operating
Peregrinations

Lambasted for the green
--I’d burn every tree—
To jest at being free!

Life: an indentured servitude
Of sorts.

I sold my soul at three,
Once I realized tears
Are currency.
Never dried-eyed again,
The doc’ diagnosed me—
Greed.

Quarter-life Catatonia

2011-03-04T15:38:00.000-08:00

All too visceral feel
of emotion stealing sanity’s cruel appeal–
wings clipped mid-flight
the midnight strife of life
devoured whole.

Gurgling gasp of pandering remembrance
– times lost and wasted–
commiserate the impossible days
never to be called again.

Rifle through the rubbish bins
pray the seance for their return.
Scribe our heart chambers aloud,
wreak the madness from our cerebellums–
just once beseech the pain within,
the suffocating vortex of emotion and logic

To be whole
with innumerable holes;
pockmarked threads
woven amongst gregarious throes.

Hubris in Remission

2011-02-28T18:20:00.000-08:00

Bent backwards at the prospect of derelict denouement
Face raw bereavement, verbiage splitting lips,
The intellectual evisceration; words ripping cerebral constructs,
Theories guillotined for transgressive simplicity
The remaining grey matter suffocates miserly
At the necessary academia
Lens of enlightenment blighted by egomania---
Fallen garb of the self-immolated.

Fate fares well; consummate king of river-flip-salvation,
Vicissitudes of visceral banality---
Ripe but to rot,
Slowed below the freezing tolerance
A mental inertia, slow sickle harvest
Starving heretical for phantoms
Always phantoms
The naysayers of roguish prophecy
Of times less constipated and consternated---
Who died and were made kings.
We bleat canonically at the lupine knowledge
Forever lost in Howling cycles of reverence
Birthed by deference.

Let the tragedy of the hero
Expire in vain;
A tumult of sin,
crazed Auto Da fe.

The Continued Allure of 7:10

2011-02-14T06:05:00.000-08:00

Though I can’t claim we’ve faced it all, it’s not far off to say we’ve endured the gauntlet. Time and again Time has snuck by, playing the ominous fiddle at fairy tales end, yet what a beautiful accompaniment it’s been. Change is consistently wreathed in a mystique of fear and awe, though that kernel of beauty (contained in it’s midst) is worth the uncanny trials of metamorphosis. We’ve played the days with the rugged endurance necessary to claim accomplishment in the dire circumstance all around. Salvation unto ourselves, I can’t even begin forming the letters that spell “Regret”, nor would I fathom to gauge their temptation. Life with you has been a steadily simmering revelation; one whose epiphanies could never be duplicated in transcendental texts or soul searching sojourns. Quite simply: through the lens of your love, through the rapturous adventure of life throbbing in your veins, and through your abiding commitment to this union, you’ve shown a man what sobering wonderment the world truly contains.

My Tatiana, few people ever truly grasp how blessed they are. Beneath all the hazardous day-time mundanities, the up-start emotional roller-coasters, and duty’s all consuming sense of progress, the bedrock of your love has been the foundation for this soul. I’ve quit worrying about miles and minutes, thrown aside the insidious capacity to self-immolate, and accepted that love exists through honesty, communication, and compromise. To wherever our journey takes us, I take this moment to reflect upon the truly Sui Generis being I’ve spent a year’s time with, and most importantly, to restate my thanks for opening up these prisonous eyes to the beauty of a life with you.

The time still reads “7:10" (like I knew it would), and the confectionary glory that spawned that crush has evolved into a full-blown amorous inferno. I love you more times than I could ever write (or find fancy metaphors for)and it is that above all else that elates my spirits at the prospect of a future with you.

Happy Anniversary my love, and Happy Valentines Day!

-Yours

Frustration's Vent

2011-02-08T14:49:00.000-08:00

Days’ conspiracy:
Parking-spots vacuum sealed,
Internet Bermuda triangle
LOST
Palpable sentience

Ennui doesn’t
Quite satisfy.
Leaves unsatiated
The emptiness—should be more appealing—
Really
Is the eye’s light disappearing.

Frustration is a carnivorous disease
Meticulously gnawing
Patience’s pristine gleam.
Dulling it, whoring it, fraying it glorious—
Until blackened snow organs
Vent through cavernous eyes.

It was a fight worthwhile of the bruise;
Bodily tattoos etched through strength’s ruse.
Along the picket fence of warbling time,
Someone greater than you deigned
Life’s suffering bulk ride the roads of your hide.

Stockpile stoicism,
For bravery is no longer half-price.

January's Apology

2011-01-31T16:36:00.001-08:00

My apologies, I’ve written 20,000 words over the course of this month, and not one of them for you. Perhaps this is my opportunity to rectify that.

A month gone already, 2011 underway, and already feeling the rustic sway of time unwinding within me; each and every rapturous moment tickling the oblivion meter down another notch. I’ve written this thing---this smattering of thoughts and philosophies that essentially is the manifestation of my last year’s thought processes. Attempting that was a quest all its own---a bartering of wills, procrastination, and perseverance. Eventually I won out. I’m rather unsure of where it’s all going to go at this point; If anything awaits for me when I walk (again) in May. Another degree down, spanning seven years, and hundreds of books read. I’ve spent my lifeblood and creative juices fueling arguments and attempting to see life from a multiform of angels. Where did it all get me? I hope to find out, in a positive light if possible, yet I relinquish my entitlements in the light of wearing the mantle of humility.

Nothing ever prepares you for the life you actually lead, as opposed to one you’ve conjured up. People are different than you dream, jobs seemingly evanescent, and bills capable of commandeering your priorities without you ever noticing. When did life becomes this? Or was it always so, just on the periphery, hidden behind the smokescreen we wear in pursuit of our passions and pleasures. I think it was always there, lurking in the shadows, tickling our subconscious with simmering worry. That embroilment has begun full-force; each and every sunrise bearing the loadstone and the cure; the beauty and the baggage that we fight through every day. It’s a matter of not letting the former outweigh the latter—as we are so wont to do--- because than we submit to demons contrived outside of ourselves. The ones that are byproducts of this glorious country; a country we’ve entered contract with as we repeatedly feel its surreptitious knife slide into our kidneys. That jolt, that jarring epiphany is what we are in. It’s what I am in.

What’s sad right now is that I can’t even manage to dedicate a thousand to you. I’ve become fixated on these word counts, line spacing, and the self-absorbed world of paragraph demarcation. I feel like I’m seeing the skeleton first without all the beautiful flesh over it---the flowery language and imagery that makes all the hard work so gratifying. Reading back lyrical botanical gardens, and hidden meadow spontaneous prose. All that germinates from some hidden spring, one I had previously tapped into daily, but now it seems no map will reveal it to me. I breathe slow, mimicking ease, forcing blank colors into my riotous head, quelling worry with stifling heartbeats---it yields no results. I’m still suffocating in the miasma of my mind. I imagine this is what writer’s block feels like, even though I’ve done about the most writing of my life.

I want to imagine February is going to be better, and I’ll let that brand smolder in my psyche for a bit---it’s got a nice after taste after all. So I suppose what I’ve really been trying to say (even after derailing and going introspective) is that I’m sorry January, for leaving you so barren. May next year rain sonnets and bestsellers; limericks and haikus; may it ring sincere (for a change) and hopefully contain some truth.

Oh, Ten

2010-12-31T12:26:00.001-08:00

Every year it seems I arrive back at the workbench, the thought-generator, the most heavenly seat for my impurest thoughts. Alas, oh ten you little scoundrel, what surprises you had in store for me. Love! Of all things, it was love that finally found me. My angel and my muse, the mistress of all these horrible doggerel sessions, catharsis on high, yet you find me nonetheless. The year was within you, a spectrum change of sorts that left me bewildered, and getting my relationship “sea legs”. I’ve managed thus far, eleven glorious months and counting, my love remains strong, evolving, never wavering.

Lord knows what the evanescent eleven holds in store: heartbreak, triumph, marriage, children, disaster, clarity, clairvoyance, myopia.....ah, the lists never get old! Will the sapling year find me accomplished in my field, a best-seller of half-hearted verse, of a mindwell drying up sooner than his premature pruney skin? Eleven will you find me happy? Perhaps that’s the most important question; for happiness is constantly fleeting, the dream on the periphery escaping our grasp with a fiendish giggle. Yet to attain happiness, one must define, and occasionally, redefine what happiness truly is to them. I won’t claim to be the sage, nor an ardent advice-giver, yet in the self-contained microcosms of our lives, we are the law. We dictate the tides of our happiness, the fluctuations of our sorrows, and yet the ever-warring battle of emotions remains permanently enigmatic to us.

Eleven I hope to see you out in your fullest, and return, perhaps not to this decaying throne, but hopefully to an elsewhere slightly less shoddy. I leave my fate in the hands of the days and the ruthless machinations of my fellow man that hold sway over them. I’ve retired pride for a time, left him to hibernate along with his slightly more sinister cousin Hubris, and have claimed humility for as long as necessary–for mastery takes time and patience. An excellence of self is mere faux-pas without sacrifice and self-contentment. I remain on the eve of your death oh ten, wreathed in phantom responsibilities that I know full well shall be slow in abating, yet my steps do not falter nor quiver, for the unknown is lighter with my love by my side, with the knowledge that love only grows the best parts of you—like an exotic tree.

I’ve never claimed to know it all, though I am responsible for the idiocy of arrogance and youth. I know more mistakes will be made, though efforts shall be made to minimize their devilish damage. I know it will be hard, more painstaking than any adjective I can currently conjure, yet the bruises barter a wisdom all their own, like the scars bequeathed to us through every new experience. I can only remain optimistic, eyes gazing steely into the unknown maw of the impending calender days, and let the exquisite mystery of oh eleven have its way with a body steadily churning through its maze.

"86"

2010-12-20T08:57:00.001-08:00

He grew up talking astronomy
with the regulars,
treading carefully
‘round guillotine kitchen doors—
“86 It”

Spent hours dropping eaves
on decadent multiformities,
imagining kingdoms
in cancerous rainbow packs.

Remembering
the ole Rebesko’s ways–
a curse & a kiss.
Bacon extra crinkly,
a crisp Benjamin underneath.

Days spent undertaking
the jellybean quest,
steps boisterous
in the unguarded rejoice—
mere shoe-lace tumbles,
knee-scraped calligraphy
reading back
tumultuous vividity.

Those walls imploded
under burden of memory;
Ole Rebesko’s legacy
in ashes.

At his grave remain
the grease-stained and
blood-splattered apron—
artifacts of the sweltering time sink.

Beneath his village moniker
lies the “Victory”—
his people carry it on,
spilling it onwards
into the irascible grease.

He carries it now:
remembering celestial milkshakes,
snuck-dollar delicacies.
He remembers
the world within the man—
“86 It”
that means finished.

Extending the Ballot

2010-11-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

I elect to not elect,
relinquish my rights–
bequeath these phantoms
to the lullabies of
constitution.

I elect to neglect,
entomb myself
in a destitution of absolutism–
in the infamy of impossibility.

I elect to recollect,
a fictitious Edenism;
to fruitlessly strive
to recapture the innocence
pre-sin–
as though salvation’s cusp
totters on choice,
barters in temptation.

I elect to accept,
the futility in silence’s
smothering caress;
a domicile of irredeemability.

The Articles of Adoration

2010-11-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

Am I the fool,
or is fate?
For believing happiness possible
with an expiration date–
with Time’s scythe
constantly whispering
sweet nothings of capture
of victory
of out-racing the capacity
for love to grow a seed into
a garden.

I won’t accept
that I spent a year building a coffin,
that I spent my heart’s sweat
in a mausoleum,
that joy is poisoned honey
finally overwhelming.

I will not claim
your kisses were strychnine–
that those hands held
the executioner’s blade.

I will not be domineered
by a law of fictitious
state and country lines,
to papers detaining and authenticating,
for the human condition
to be contingent upon everything
but the emotion in it.

I will not acquiesce
for it’s too easy to slump in defeat,
to climb back into bed with insatiability,
to court the disaster
of the terminally undecided.

I will not accept
the heart monitor’s siren cry;
wailing demise
while the mind remains ripe.

These shackles I will not wear.
No longer will I play
safety’s game—
for it warrants no cushion
in the grave,
no solace
at those ominous pearly gates.

Wake Up

2010-10-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

Better wake up

WAKE
UP

Scare sleep
From
Eyes

WAKE UP

Lift
The smothering blind

UP
GET UP

Dust paralysis
From bones
and
STAND UP

Better speak up

SPEAK
UP

Send shocks
To
Tongue

SPEAK UP

Rouse
The buried blood

UP
GET UP

Emancipate dreams
From mind
and
WAKE UP

A Collective Horizon

2010-09-13T13:56:00.001-07:00

A man urinates
behind the sanctuary of foliage.
Waves rollicking onward, incandescent
sparkle in its million dollar smile.
Distant motor thrum
echoing into the quiet lapping,
nonchalant heartbeat steadily gurgling.
Horizon’s teeth snarling,
distant jungle peaks belie
Time’s stolen serenity.

A man fishes,
coaxing the sea for its hapless children.
A wayward slaughter,
cat & mouse struggle of the enigmatic maw.
Wind lulls as if a dream,
quiet seconds in the cacophony world.
True majesty of such moments
will too soon fall into the muck and whirl.
What a beautifully wasted retrospect,
a silent confessional filed
to “Rain check”...

...stolen moments of clarity

Watch the synchronized avian cylinder
gyrate majestically over
ephemeral cerulean
as elderly folks enjoy the scenery,
hands unclasped, a weathered familiarity—
treading along the twilight track,
Gaea offers solace oft overlooked,
a parting tableau.

A man crabs,
pacing cantankerously:
mother-hen craning
testing tautness
seeking the thrill of the pull.
What unsuspecting prize
lies within his submerged prison?

A man
plagued with gout
waddles along:
boisterous blue bucket in tow,
wilting pole weeping morosely.
Bulge kisses rails,
conforms and squeezes
holding hopes of greener days.

Life’s multiformity walks here:
all restless husks gazing outward
pursuing what became lost.

Hurricane Season

2010-09-02T14:39:00.001-07:00

Mass Hysteria!
Garbed in flashlights,
thousand-watt generators----
weathering the apocalyptic weather.

EYE is growing bigger
wider, churning furiously;
irate Sauron over the seas
blustering madly towards rocky infinity.

Shutter up the house,
a willing entombment.
Flee! Flee!
The hearth’s turned toxic—
foundation fit to collapse.

Categories are jumping---
3 to 4 to 5.
What roll of the die
shall decide fate?
Closer, Closer
drawn by fear's magnetism.

Commonplace name
belies the harbinger of destruction.
Breeding rapidly off stricken tongues---
Whispered, Whispered
the cowled boogeyman
hides behind cerulean horizon.

Screens obsessed with swirls;
white fluffy masses on candy-striped paths---
what lucky dots get the flashing crimson?

Constrained fear in weatherman eyes,
gambling gods on high---
what an unpredictable nature, Mother,
your hapless children scurry
like shattered ant dunes.

Succeeded to ghost-towns:
boarded up, evacuated, bunker stock-piled.
Waiting, Waiting
for blackening sky,
final judgment is nigh.

Baited, Baited
Breath catches and reels,
eyes glued, lists checked,
weatherman voice erupts tremulous:
“ It Veered Away ”

Sobriquets

2010-09-01T20:06:00.001-07:00

Kerouac,
you quit on me—
let the bottle win,
bled out from the belly.

What happened to Ti Jean:
lost in the city,
in the ship’s bowels
brewing madness poetry?

Jack,
when did the motor of thirst
drive you into
the Duluoz dust of myth?
Legend became life,
a deceased sonic discord:
Bixby Canyon nightmares
stealing sanity from spontaneity.

Memory Babe,
how did you forget the golden rule
— never stop—
sacred scripture
of automotive heart.

If only you left behind
the sweet wine;
rewound to reckless thighs,
joule goodbyes—
the Paradise mask
that knew no bounds.

Re-Garbing

2010-08-18T18:23:00.000-07:00

Pride,
it’s time I put you aside,
purge the mind of your advice,
put you back in the box Pandora.
Ambition breeds avarice,
a quart of desire multiplying rampant;
contagion ways of reckless abandon.

I’ll take these rags up,
let the Tatterdemalion roam,
perhaps the Tinsmith will share a jug,
imbue some wino wisdom
of abandon and troughs.
Or perhaps, the Ferryman can usher us home;
smiling as the Styx churns frothy,
sating Charon’s toll in humility.

Rust takes up residence
upon this ocher crown–
How the ambrosia goes wasted!
sops all over life lines.
Woe to those wicked sisters,
that fatalistic triumvirate
of yarn frayers and snippers—
if only numerals were the true prison.

Death of Analogue

2010-08-05T16:52:00.001-07:00

Grandfather clock strikes metronome,
stuck permanently in mute dying agony,
chiming an hour beguiling:
its temporal demise.

Avian scream,
materialized magically,
chirping it’s elegy
for a broken sequoia tower
that’s overspent its numerical tyranny.

If only you could fix this malady;
whirring contraptions
birthed from pursuing stars.
Who was I to claim time?
Dictating hours,
rousing phantom alarms—
every pulse claiming life.

A Quest For Escher's Staircase

2010-07-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

If only the road were an endless tattoo
Scribing it’s religion across this canvas.
Perhaps it could even flash the brights
At the right time
Warring warnings on the asphalt battlefield.

I’ll be your Sal if you’ll be my Dean,
Seeking the lost father that’s haunting our dreams.
We’ll blur the state lines of marriage and decency,
Litter children like soon-forgotten cities.
Share this incomplete husk with me,
Trekking towards reconciling our shattered masculinity.
Let’s ride this dark soul of America,
Levitating above the varicose highway veins
In the reaping lull of the gloaming---
It’s time the Tinsmith whispers
Set the pace for our madness.

Horizon’s endless enticement
---The consummate trickster---
Doubles back on time’s loaded die
Withering righteousness to elegy.
Moment's past ripe, truth turned cryptology---
What phantom hero pummels the accelerator onward?

Dear Monteria

2010-07-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Monteria,

I’ve never felt the tread of your exotic streets,
nor the pulling anguish of time’s cruelty,
yet love is a telepathy all its own.

Every fragrant roll of a tongue;
every sway of steps to a rhumbaed internal beat;
every flourishing maelstrom of emotion—
ripens a mind to the womb of your beauty.

Somewhere you stir in far off splendor,
tasting a panoptic wonder divorced
from the skeleton songs Americana.
What chorus flows in your veins?
For an endless canto viscerally beckons.

You’ve bestowed a most wondrous gift,
a being sui generis.
Would that I could repay,
award kingdoms and treasures,
yet all I’ve to offer is a beating heart,
too-tired hands, and a promise of fidelity.

Until the day we finally meet,
have no fear for the treasure of your city;
she remains divine, safe-guarded,
a true testament to your beauty.

Love

"A" Positive

2010-06-03T21:42:00.000-07:00

This blood of mine is meant to last:
to spill onward into generations,
to carry the olive song of 300 deaths,
to pen the magnum opus.

There’s no warranty on blood;
it will leak out at the slightest,
betray in its boisterous crimson.
There’s always the fear it will dry up,
leaving you a shriveled prune of broken greatness.

They say it means “Victory of the People”,
every tortuous step carries their hopes.
What job it is to lament
in a world of wasted sorrows.

So when the time comes to choose:
to meld, mix, and let be,
may you harbor me faithfully
into the maw of future’s unknown—
may you remember me
as the collected euphoria flowing through this husk,
who if porous, would give every last drop
to make Victory real.

Of Dangling Carrots and Spyglasses

2010-06-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

Winded into Hestia’s blinding ire
every gyrating thrust of melancholy dusk
closes the seam of solar empathy
Farewell decency, reality bears not this insidious weight,
let Atlas crumble before the stark horror of his burdens
never to lift nor leave
but damned always----twined Promethean causality

Love turns deciduous
shedding skins for zesty southern fantasy
molting coats, commandeering dreams
septically turning reality
into weathered agony

Wish away the dandelion breeze
may the continents provide proper pageantry
for the ovation of ethnic inter-connectivity
blinded by the glaucoma of universal intolerance.

Ocher

2010-05-12T20:02:00.001-07:00

I’ve seen great men reduced to orange aprons;
begrudging breaths for their resilience,
garbed in dirt, stammering nonsense,
shuffling along the proletariat rat maze.

I’ve felt repetition’s sting become monotony;
leeching desire, leashing dreams,
offering myopic solace
that bleeds at the periphery.

I’ve worn despondency in self-wrought shackles;
lynching individuality, sowing conformity,
gnawing tirelessly at gilded ambition’s
self-fulfilling prophecy.

Huzzahing Olympus

2010-05-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

I felt the pull of your anguish
cementing my shoes
on a one-way ride to
Charon’s decimating kiss.

Somewhere the Nebula’s dream this;
Zeus’ cosmos spouting
plasmic tears
like the jug of ambrosia overflowing.

Up in the mountains,
where the sky kisses cerulean,
they wear nooses as ties—
casual Promethean suffering.

When the bullets can’t be dodged,
lodging in the rough
of your diamond skin;
every shard becomes precipice
to the taunting ovation of ashes.

The Woes of Cartography

2010-04-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

Pangea breaks;
Infiltrating sleep,
Deferring dreams

Terminally taunting
Tomorrow’s reality.
Days dying sotto voce,
Eggshell-wading ‘round
Landmine heart

Southern coaxing
Pulls this equator apart.
Home’s a temptress
That’s perfected her art.

What hope could spurt
in this salted earth?

Sativa's Thorns

2010-04-20T21:00:00.001-07:00

Bacchanalian inhale
the lush herbage revelatory.
Soaring sonar minds
pinging morse riddles;
clipped sensory speak
of neurons chattering.

Fumigating melancholia:
unburdening lush sorrows
stickily clinging,
hewing lashes as lesions,
orbs blistering in crimson appeal.

Celestial alabaster
encroaches peripherals;
a widening obscurity lense.
Brain-stall hypothermia,
asphyxiating Eden’s blood flow;
sentient while comatose.

Sextant's Demise

2010-04-15T22:43:00.000-07:00

Aren’t we all lost,
burning the fuel of our dreams?

Fingers tickling skyscrapers,
blinded by zenith’s unattainability.
Affirming idealism to survive,
eluding Failure’s poignant bite.

Must illusion be so beautiful,
goading as it dissolves.

Bait relevance, reveal itself
and euthanize dying hope.
Bid farewell compass laws,
spinning heretical under Polaris.

Burning the fuel of our dreams,
aren’t we all lost?

Threnody

2010-04-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

A lot of life is losing people.
Paralyzed in helplessness,
pleas muted in open-howled screams.
Watch to whither,
sharp pangs of surprise’s sting—
garbed in futility’s monochromia.

Condolences in barren earth
reclaiming its toll.
Watering drips nourish
memory’s eternal voyage;
ebbing through generations,
never to be soiled.

Farewell tattooed to lips,
rended open at reality’s whim;
a canto ends, a dirge begins—
live but to embrace it.

Sheet Music

2010-04-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

Huddled form burrowing into ribs,
hair cascading incandescence,
sweat’s exotic drizzling sheen
melding skins.

Bow-tie lips blooming rapture,
run red the metronome,
blighting logic for passion—
coaxings of the true hearth.

Expel scarred heart tissue,
pulp flourishing anew,
beat purposeful, exultant;
synchronicity’s winsome game.

Kypos

2010-04-07T20:16:00.001-07:00

There were days when all I did was wake up and descend into the garden. Kneeling into the loamy, lost amidst the verdure—feeling Gaea reclaiming me as my breathe pulsated true. Sinking hands into succulent soil, grasping at the coarse richness of the earth, I was content, blissfully unguarded in the disarming beauty. I felt the air surround me, watched life sprout triumphantly, I was the harvest awaiting my time. The sun scalding my back, blackening skin, sweat tasting exotic in its righteous sting; I remember smiling at the sundress girls laughing in there skipping gaits. There was a time when life was rollicking in the days, letting sunshine blur the time— numbers merely a coordination of lines in hindsight.

We traveled to the grocery store in the winding, perilous mountain roads. Olive trees bent squiggly cartoons, chasing horizon into the next secluded world. Every town a microcosm, we surrendered before the circus assault of life, littering amidst our plights, every beehive motion buzzing the thrush of purpose. You grasped my hand in that parched wrinkled glory, letting wisdom speak through it, assuring me in foreign tongues that the moment was all we had. We would bundle up and meander back, watching the roads swerve into to heavens. The strange greenery and livestock sounds creating the chorus as that chirping voice of mine pestered questions with no answers. You were solemn in your statue grace, astutely surveying in the casual authority of this place—you told me harvests were built out of the backs of men, toiling their life with the bartering earth.

We arrived back at the ramshackle simplicity of home; windows flung open to coax the breeze, sunlight filtering in through the porous windows leaking light— the damp feel of the shade in the secluded groves of the house. Nothing compared to the pebbly trail of broken squares, leading home into the earth’s womb. Traversing chicken-wire fencing, exulting into the neighboring windows, I burrowed back into the earth and begged her forgiveness for our easy sinning breathes.

Archer's Paradox

2010-04-06T17:06:00.000-07:00

Sultry stain on the lips
of your interminable essence
lingering like terminal illness
that countless rebellions could
never quell—
this coupe is you,
entirely, irrevocably
claiming ordinance
Pull apart the seams
of this chapped skin,
adore it box o’ chocolates,
choosing delectable
the demise inevitable,
falling eternal in this
pothole road of bumpy
commitment
I’ll memorize those orbs,
miniature satellites of
the heart–-
circling piranha schools
devouring this
beating pageantry

Locomotive Gestations

2010-04-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

Gnarled toothpick trees
jutting their garish garnish.

Write the doggerel ‘till it turns lyric

Sinuous curve
of the wires telephonic.
Houses protest their stucco monopoly—
all ghost towns and graveyards.

Let the sleepy haze of your eyes
wash over me–-
sweet ablutions of the heart

Allotted such small crusts
of hourglass earth....
dwindling down voracious sinkholes.

Let the subject manifest
& cater to our duress

Parking lots zig-zag into zipper sky.

The lanyard of your delectable soul
twines cores through DNA
—fusing “G’s”to “A’s”—
alphabet story that is our days

Skylines belching inky,
necrotizing azure’s fluttering divinity.

The halved coinage of our bodies
minted whole in convergence

The Day Beauty Forgot Its Name

2010-03-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

When the source
Of validation
Is exposed skin
What should we
Expect?

What lies within,
For you,
Is defecation;
Something to be shamed,
Hidden.

Rather reap praise
From body’s melting
Canvas.
Appreciate the flesh,
Disregard what’s left.

So I’ll love your
Mounds and orbs,
Preach religion
To your holy carapace.
Make you a millionaire
In self-esteem
By loving this transparent
Beauty.

I wonder
If one day
You’ll realize
That’s not love at all.

Re-tiling

2010-03-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

The floor rips up easily,
Flaking summery skin.

Two disenchanted mallards
Returning to the spot once called “home”.
Rain blurs windows to mosaic,
Slow drip damning in persistence.

Fog wreathes like a coil,
Suffocating the skyline.
Rooftops poke like bubbly hope
Distorted into nightmare.

The floor rips up easily,
Sucking peel of parting skin.

Tarnished oak floor,
A gilded heart
Beats consolation;
Exposure breeds erosion.

Trust is myth birthed to being;
Two parts honesty, eight parts deception.
Retold thereafter
As idealized dreaming.

It is all bare bones
Torn asunder.
Paint over, build upward,
Let time render it forgotten.

The floor rips up easily.

Fuse

2010-03-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

Knowing the end
from the beginning–
each second ticking oblivion.

Nearing closer
to scything the heart,
agony building
its infernal time bomb.

Silver lining
won’t douse the fuse—
just make it burn beautiful.

Leagues and hours
speak insidiously,
wreathed in future’s garb.
Solitude’s banner unfurled,
totteringly holding the breeze.

Prophecy’s allure lies
on free will’s intervening cusp.

Divination

2010-03-25T20:45:00.000-07:00

Burbling lullaby twitch,
Soul-time incandescence.
Racketeer Elysian’s frugal kisses,
Paradise permanently eclipsed.

Savage frond,
In what prophecy do we believe?
Blindfolded willingly,
Cantankerously trudging into viridian.

Shapeless stalking void,
Hungering Pandora.
Despondency’s limitless fuel
Is concaved stargazing.

Brumous Meditations

2010-03-23T13:15:00.001-07:00

Infant Spring warbles off-key,
sky wreathed foggy.
Glide silently—picture reel—
floating weed is parched flooring.

Distance blurs,
horizon’s soggy filter.
Chill embracing bones,
copulating steam-breath.

Overhead, shrill foghorns bleat,
onyx stars circling—
splashing collisions hardly ruffling,
glass momentarily shimmering.

Beats turn cacophonous,
maelstrom discordance.
Vibrating in lobes,
commandeering heartbeat.

Rain patters trepidly,
whispering greatsongs.
Breeze rises in accompaniment—
still life’s aural soulmate.

Citadel's Lamentation

2010-03-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

Castles speak of dreams,
fairytales, happy endings.
Crenellated defenses,
awe-invoking majesty.

Every prince snags a princess,
gallops into sunset distance.
Moat is perpetually open,
no grievous love afflictions.

Weathering endurance;
time’s depleting counter,
fuse tickling towards detonation–
void only in idealism,
fraught in temporality.

A fleeting wish:
permanent protection.
Walls crumble within,
moat turns septic,
bugles die in detente.

Naive defenses,
internal mutiny.
Ravenous gallows
devour surrender’s symphony.

Conundrum of Flavors

2010-03-19T19:41:00.001-07:00

If love were meant
to be necessary
we wouldn’t barter
in ecstasy.

Panting breaths
pooling sweat
soiling sheets
spoiling purity.

Heat consumes,
logic departs.
Let action speak,
consequence welcomed.
Let reason rest,
weakly protest-
build tension’s dissension.

Of Burdens and Birthrights

2010-03-18T14:47:00.000-07:00

Metamorphosis is a lot like it sounds; considerably scarier than the actual process. The humorous part of the whole endeavor is that you aren’t really aware of it until after the fact—merely existing as usual in our continual humdrum huzzah that leaves life all blurs of conditions to be met and satisfied. When we manually remove the obstruction, reveling in the actual moment, it is then we see how change is indeed possible—even in the remotest hearts, or fortified minds. Whether it be a person, object, or event, something or another starts the avalanche rolling, and the subtle nuances disappear and mutate into something altogether different, alien at first, but in actuality, more a simulacrum of our former selves.

The mirror reflects only what you will it. With Dorian Grey weighing on your mind, it is inevitable that decadence brushes the tips of your subconscious, imbuing you with the faults you secretly squirrel away from the world. We are the revolution in thought; constantly turning and churning to compensate for the vast light years of our own thought’s creation. Stopping is the fleeting kiss of death’s lips---we are the Cassady-bound-Tinsmith-searching masses that seek the truth in the constant fluctuation and propelling of desire into the unknown “next” moment. Let us chase the future if we must, if only to soothe the impertinent woes of the present, yet that won’t erase nor soothe the conundrums we devour in underland nonsense. Truth and only truth, the maxim above all else that is the true mitochondria of life; we seek nothing more than the infinitesimal grain of falsity that taints the purity of our Edenistic selves. What option do we have but to intoxicate on the second-rate revelatory truths that will satiate the personal cache of our pockmarked insecurities?

Chase futilely on into the forever setting sun; the paths sprawled out like diseased roots of the life tree….congealing into the horizon, dust-coated--- forever mocking in possibility. Indecision is the root, the tethers of a family life of responsibility and respectability; it is this that turns the body about face---leaving neck to scalding Helios---it is this that makes us move, for we have to move, if not for ourselves, then for the person the world needs of us. How long can the charade be played, façade maintained? For as long as the undying thirst of acceptance and reliance burdens your soul….carry on in the facsimile world, cherish the few honest kernels, perhaps that’s all we were ever meant to deserve...

The Unwhole Whole

2010-03-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

Side yearns discontented,
heat signature missing,
numbness settling in,
fingers futilely grasping air–
absence viscerally felt.

Whole unmade,
foundation shakily swaying,
loneliness black hole,
imploding in desire—
touches dealing in rapture.

Brain can’t live
without heart
— beat on—
through agony’s chasm.
Separated through fictitious
miles, minutes,
reunion’s volatility requited.

The Romatic Quest for the Comfortably Numb

2010-03-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

Let’s fix problems
by forgetting
burying
masking them—
living in the smokescreen.

One minute of pure agony
can be rapturous:
existence is duality.

Pain faced
— if and only if—
may possibly fade.
Fear confronted,
suffers a similar fate.

We’re the monsters,
fixing the parts we hate.

Maybe
we were never broken
But
resigned to being too late.

Battle of the String

2010-03-15T19:45:00.001-07:00

Drawstring gets lost,
lopsided regression.
Seismic fulcrum see-saw,
iceberg visible—
claimed within waistband.

Squeeze fabric,
wringing forceful.
Inches, precious inches
caterpillar progress.
Lone string forlorn,
twin’s tragic empathy—
adjustment turned one-way.

Hopes ride impossible,
success always contingent.
Reconcile the lost, united–-
what defines struggle worthwhile?

Arrives reclaimed,
pulley-string functional.
Coaxing the minuscule,
fighting for mundane;
life’s little things
worth the war...

Sometimes
all we have is
small victories.

Solubility

2010-03-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

If it didn’t burn out
I’d be nice—
If it does
It’s life.

What a currency.

Buoyancy knows
It floats—
Cul-de-sac
Sink slow

Maplewood

2010-03-10T19:37:00.000-08:00

Screaming like polar bears
on the merry-go-round
air tasted sugary sweet
wonka chocolate factory
Milky finger
caressing on long bus rides
sparkly rings
husband and wife games
we played in big grownup talk
that rattled windows
Willow trees drop their tears
on the ground
in the rainy weather
while blood pools
down your knee
boo-boo kisses
only make lips more
red
Spinning so fast
and faster
sky turns muddy water
sun mixes coloring-book pages
crayons spill outside of lines
love we said
over and over again
love husband love wife
love you love me
the bus ride ends

Anatomy of Communication

2010-03-09T19:48:00.001-08:00

When words fail
lips will do
Orating passion
branding truth
Unclothing lies
fleshy absolution
Rhythmic polygraph
erratic conclusion
Get an answer
seek again
Whet contentment
sate again
What question asked
need not be said

Amalgamation

2010-03-08T20:06:00.001-08:00

Scattering of foreign toiletries
announces a presence.
A sobering reminder,
she’s taken up residence.

Scent acclimating;
imbuing sheets, painting walls.
Saunter in familiarity,
dominated by a frame so small.

Invaded completely;
irrevocably molded for wear.
Carved out a heart-space,
life waiting to be shared.

Collapse of the Assembly Line

2010-03-08T09:15:00.001-08:00

Words flow forth from the well of thought,
Parch and wither upon barren minds.

Eyes meander through joy and sorrow-
Voluntarily blindness is the gateway to freedom.

Wishes define vacancies as real-
Hope is all but a waiting game.

Pretentious pretenders claim the throne,
Masses of rapscallions bare the witness.

Flowery words mask the worst of smells-
Bouquets deceive only a few senses.

Forgotten visionaries in pubs with jokers,
Toasting change and drinking powerlessness.

Reality pleads to be retaken-
Illusion topples all resistance.

Clocks stop, taking progress with them-
Stasis wavers over desolation.

Question marks pile sky high-
Air becomes thick with growing dissension.

Answers cry alongside solutions,
An unbearable burden of being invisible

Words rage relentless from invisible prisons,
Germinate and flourish in the waning fertility.

A Fly In The Wind

2010-03-08T08:50:00.001-08:00

Easy, breeze. We got time.
The fight never ends,
our struggle just begins.

Give us a sec,
catch a breath,
as we brace for it.

Okay, Go.
Bye, bye, sweet control.

Decade Strong

2010-03-05T14:26:00.001-08:00

Simple as exchanging names,
blustery indecision dare not tread.
Adolescent minds in need of affirmation,
kindness a currency, thus far well spent.

Brotherhood forged on manhood’s horizon,
squawking voices, stick arms–
amorous hearts, experimental wants.
Trials in youth’s volatility,
scarred for betterment,
experience scathingly wrought—
fraternity rightly earned.

Distance may blur memories;
muscles bulge and shrink,
stomachs protrude and suck—
battle-worn camaraderie never dies.

Know that time may change faces,
sunlight will race across and dip again–
life shall pummel in its righteous gauntlet.

A brother earned, family forged;
let the road meander true,
we remain, as always,
bound in the dust-worn journey.

Native Partition

2010-03-04T22:27:00.000-08:00

Paumanok in my heart,
York in my soul;
chant the ethos,
that renders me whole.

Devouring metropolis,
rejuvenating burbs;
cleaved amidst urbanity,
progress haltingly heard.

Isolated in the hive,
emboldened in verdure;
quell duality’s quarrel,
binary mind be nurtured.

Inferno's Quell

2010-03-01T19:54:00.001-08:00

When the flame sputters its dying glory
smoke curls into the heavens.
How could a spark reignite,
set ablaze a desecrated wick–
some flames deserve smothering.

The old burn is a new trick,
peel back the scab, scar the scar.
If only the wax truly melted,
taking the puddle with it–
burn to consume, burn parasitic.

Thawing

2010-02-28T18:24:00.000-08:00

From cracking jaw,
to hyper-sensitive knees;
bleary-eyed morning beauty,
to deadpan hilarity—
fear never gnawed so voracious.

Happiness fights civil war upon scales,
tipping to fear in guilty deprecation.
Each roller coaster roar (up to down)
euphoria lies erratic—
rapturous if only evanescent.

Forever breeds naivety,
tempered by mutinous heart.
Committed to wild accelerations,
beat
beat to burst in the moment.

The Caustic Commitment Clause

2010-02-26T15:04:00.000-08:00

Everyone is married to one thing or another,
copulated to notions of eternity.
Passions lingering myriad guises,
obfuscated through Time’s filthy lense.

Wax if only to wane,
Median jests of normalcy.

Emblematic of existence,
harbinger of bequeathed freedoms.
Defined in tattoo’s permanence,
commitment pontifcally leers.

Patriotic Fibers

2010-02-23T17:27:00.000-08:00

Time to weep,
the dollar sign shadow
looms larger than an onyx sun;
blight out prosperity–
premature interment

Cellulose asphyxiation,
debt digs loaded graves–
doggedly nipping heals
‘cross styx’s muddy waters.

Born pure to bent-back;
Atlas Strangled.
Burdens consort with nooses;
innocence flees from baby derma,
corrupted by every cent–
greed’s birth annuls life.

Feed the glutton
that grips your throat.
Smile tighter,
where it goes—
fodder fuels the flames.

Substantiality

2010-02-22T14:42:00.000-08:00

It feels like I’ve spent so long trying to hide myself behind words and characters; as opposed to expressing the emotions, thoughts, and ideas that germinate them, they’ve been an escape from the fact. From trying to say it compact and loaded, or long and elegant, it’s never been honestly said; just said. I’ve tried to be clever, ingenious, droll, urbane, satirical, and witty; only to be rewarded with mere ghosts of a person. The pretensions of writing are that you are a contradiction yourself. Drawing up people from real life or ghost memories; coaxing up situations that have never arisen; feigning emotions that haven’t truly been felt. Having to see words reflecting back at you, words I wrote in claimed truth, and knowing that that’s a truth I can’t even feel. There’s such a travesty in it, even in this, where I’m roving the mind for clever attempts and metaphors to appease some creative spark within, yet each line of attempted catharsis never hits home. What is writing if not an exegesis of yourself?

I read lines back to me that seem so petty and unlived. Who is that naïve soul that is spouting such holy commands? Did I ever live the words I’m reading, did I ever love the countless phantom lips I said I’ve kissed; has there ever been a substantial moment worth recording, or is this life all a big melodrama of mangled literary grandiosity?

What is this search, this bildungsroman? Can I ever come of age, become a man, look at the world and not be afraid at how horridly wrong it feels…I’m getting tired of never knowing and always hoping for the answer in the writing, but I’ll keep going I suppose, because it’s all I know---there I go again with the pretension. It seems I can’t help but hate being a writer—if that’s what I am--- because there’s no imminent glory in knowing words and using them at your whim. What good is expression if it isn’t earnest, but feigned, for art’s sake. There’s always a question fueling it; the manic musings and proclamations, warnings, or warring advice that I’m more prescribed to take. If transposing my woes on the world, on all the countless people I claim to know and don’t, and the millions of others I will never; who am I to demand their attention?

All I can say is that I’ve lived more privileged than I deserve. I’ve tried to find kindness in the world, though have succumbed to the follies. Where perfection walks I’ve vainly attempted to trod, yet maturation is a gorey process. I’ve tried to understand and failed; grasped some and then never fully seized what it yielded. I’ve yearned for love, foolishly worn stoicism as armor, and am now reaping the harvest of such idiocy; I’ve no idea how to conduct relationships with anyone anymore. I don’t know what these words can say or what power I can give them (if any)….I suppose this whole rant is about what I don’t know.

There’s no glory in feeling pathetic for yourself, if anything you’re more despicable for it. I guess this is all warranting some worthwhile sagacity, some wisdom to be gained from this, if only to be run amiss at the next attempt to showcase it. This quest, the road that never ends, it’s all in attempt to do something substantial. To have a legacy of something, a body of worthwhile contribution or statement; like the narcissistic desire to procreate and carry on your name. I’ve no desire for a son to bear my name, nor its flaws and strengths into the next age; I’d rather a lesson or viewpoint or realization that I’ve yet to reach; an epiphany righteously earned, deserving of contemplation and deep meditation. Perhaps the ego deserves deflating; hang up the pen and plug away until I’ve a miniature life to spread my name, maybe then I’ll feel substantial.

Gutta Percha

2010-02-22T12:07:00.001-08:00

Bore a hole, born of decay,
weaned negligence,
decadent abuse.

Rotten core,
crumbling shell,
infected root;
life-flow withers.

Cracked foundation,
holy excavation,
extract the dying;
regal void.

Fill to seal,
manufacture machinations,
plastic substitute;
enameled forgery.

Withered crown,
abused gamut runs,
left for disrepair;
a broken throne.

Hole that is whole,
artificially alive,
ribbon-tied to eye;
never again pure.

Infirm(worries)

2010-02-20T07:13:00.001-08:00

Been away awhile,
lost in doldrum whirls;
kept haze-induced,
spent screaming agony–
brain bled oozy méconnaissance.

Trapped soul raged,
body machine tethered in blight.
Corpse pose etherised,
self-destruction usurping inside.

Carcass flies buzz about eyes
-mock sunlight’s creep-
through curtain’s side.
Panting hallucinatory,
begging time;
strike fleshy epiphany at midnight.

7:10

2010-02-15T15:10:00.000-08:00

It was the vulnerability in those eyes.
Staring, imploring in heart-breaking sincerity
For the respect you more than deserve.
It was then I saw the fathoms of your hurts.

Arms became makeshift tourniquets,
Staunching wounds buried in time;
Perseverance became not weakness but strength.
Not breaking fortified the heart;
Left it open and scarred—
Armed to weather another assault.

Vows have no credence in word,
Stale to brittleness once told.
If promises swear to hold ardently true,
Only actions sow solace anew.
What comfort is to be given but hope,
Repaving the worn roads of woe.

Contradictory Hearts

2010-02-12T16:51:00.000-08:00

We’re all filled with what we wish we could say.
Our tongues stumble on emotion,
Bumble when the heart is even remotely involved.
We bunker down, arm the walls of our selves,
Vulnerability is something we’re not well versed in.

For all the grand romantic gestures we gestate in our minds,
We imagine the cold aftermath of rejection’s sigh.
We court love’s duplicity;
Tempting our own daring with denial’s doldrums.
It’s a lesson never learned
A pain rightly earned,
Ultimately
A scar on our hearts we’re loathe to see heal.

Every broken dream takes a face,
We’ll hate it for a time,
Commiserate with the stale air—
Though we’ll muster up the merit to try again.
Who will be next, we always ask,
The answer lies in the spark of kindness;
Generosity's glean glinting in the eyes,
Every shallow thought we harbor is quick in demise,
We’d gladly throw it all away to be wanted.

On nights when the winter steals our warmth,
Leaves the blankets as our only solace,
The reveries of past romance shall warm our toes.
The fumbling kisses and wild ecstasies,
The rapturous highs and intolerable lows;
We hate what we love,
Though another life we could never know.

When the Color Fades

2010-02-11T13:56:00.001-08:00

You’d gray naturally,
Scoff at painting your face.
Wake up clear-eyed,
Imbue faith just by breathing.

When I dream of who you’ll be,
If you’ll ever be
I’ll fast-forward to the gray.
That’s when I’ll really love you--
When the color fades,
But not the beauty.

The Gender Of Tears

2010-02-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

At five years old I knew the world was a cruel place. I saw my father grasp his chest and scream in a rattling way. I remember the thump of his carcass on the floorboards, the wild fear in his eyes, and when his eyes locked onto mine I remember clearly for the first time that I saw a man cry. That was the last act those eyes would commit. When I sobbed in the alien air of the funeral parlor, the river pooling down my face, I was awarded asylum—youth was a forgivable weakness.

From that moment on I was embroiled in a battle against the legacy of man. For every routine hurt that would sabotage my youth, I had to fight back the tears that yearned for release. I was terrified. If to let my eyes water was to embrace the moments before death, I was sure I didn’t want to go quite yet. This persisted into my teens, when hurts became possible through words and broken dreams. I let these trials pass through, I often felt like a stone statue wearing away. My eyes felt like a martyr at the stake, I was withholding this pain for a great cause, at least I thought, the vivid thrush of life.

I grew older still. I felt romance smolder in the pit of my stomach, retching acid burns through my heart. The pangs of life pockmarked me like a dart board, still I soldiered on. Eventually I realized that women were able to cry without retribution, even freely. There was something hidden in that additional “X” chromosome, a free pass of sorts. I was envious of every magnanimous hurt that rattled through their fragile frames. The earth shattering quakes as they fell into the fault-lines of their personal despair. I was a ghost, an emotional vampire; I could merely stare in envy, living vicariously through their emotional release.

A girl I would later realize I loved was afraid of me. She battered me with passionate munchkin fists, demanding I spout those burning tears for her reassurment. She was leaving me. She wondered how I could stare blankly at the fathomless depths of the floor and not feel anything. If only she knew then that I was a cataclysm in the making. I stared into her eyes, they were pitifully drenched, I saw my reflection back in them---the watery sheen of her irises felt like damnation. I couldn’t summon the decency to tear up and commiserate the misery of our demise. It was at that moment she told me that only real men cry.

I managed to make my way to middle age. I encountered the slow burn of time tethering me to the grave. Somehow women were drawn to me like moths to a parasitic flame. Every tear they shed at the expanse of a man emotionally dead cracked the foundation of my terminal wall. Their wailing sobs became the soundtrack of my middle years. I was hoarding despair to satiate the barren desert in my eyes. I was told I was broken.

A century halved tormented my flesh; I grappled with the demons that refused to escape. If gravity were a palpable essence I would’ve sworn the earth was reclaiming me. I stumbled through the broken halls of my life breathing woe at the empty frames that gazed listlessly back at me. My eyes found their damnable twins in the dust-coated mirror that haunted my days. The orbs staring back resembled caked-dry madness---it was around this time I began courting madness. For every morning I would spend broken, willing anything to reflect back, I remained a withered simulacrum of a former man.

I woke up in the necrotizing cold of a December day feeling my father’s ghost breathing down on me. Inexorably drawn to my spectral face, the mirror whispered my swan song that day. A new light gleaned in my eyes, a holy infusion spilling out from my desecrated shell. Suddenly I felt fire coaxing brimstone through my veins. Collapsing within the heap of my sorrows, I began contorting the tangled strings of my frayed life-line. A slow explosion was gaining fervor within my heart; I felt my jaw scrape my chest as I punctuated the air in vocal duress. Those screams reverberated in the halls of desolation; I writhed in the mute horror of a body’s mutinous curtain call.

Was it the light fading that usurped me? I felt more than saw my vision blurring. For every diminutive fist that attempted to beat a response out of me, I couldn’t help but wonder why in this moment of finality. Gasping crimson, I lurched myself towards the tenuously shaking glass. Staring back was the corpse of a man. I felt it stop, the rhythmic thump of life’s beat.

The requiem began with a sole drip of saline.

Tablet

2010-02-09T17:13:00.001-08:00

There were equations involved. Recipes and meticulous algorithms which constructed reason from the nebulous white noise. Answers lay hidden in plain sight, if only to taunt those voluntarily blind. When choice was an option, you chose to deny.

When roads forked you wanted to die. Half of you went one way, the rest wondered why. Divergence became your tyrannical soul.

Handshakes were the blueprints for deconstruction. Rugged niches and calloused caverns spoke their sermons to the mass spec of your brain. Sizing up was a mere refrain–-greeting was a study in coalescing what the world decided to maim.

Gazes could never be cold, merely soulless. Eyes became spheres of analytical dissection; names a mere pleasantry, desire not even registered.

What stood before was a matter of flesh and blood. Breath circulated the carcass, buoying life into a shell seemingly unliving. Cadaverous in stance, warm to the touch; a doppelganger of incipient sentience. Versed in the diametrical maxims of its kind; love bled to hate as peace in wartime.

There existed the corrupted tabula rasa–- birthed into existence with predisposition.

Affection For Affectation

2010-02-08T15:22:00.000-08:00

Would you deem me cretinous for negligence,
or find endearment in the faux paus?
Demand I wreath myself in crimson as proof,
suffocate you in flower’s sweet perfumery?

Would these letters satisfy that cavernous void,
spell love loud enough without uttering the word?
Can these hands build a world big enough,
While still being well versed in rapture?

Must I cleave the shadows from my face?
What’s underneath palls to that within.
Shall every dance burn our loins,
drench the stench of conquerment?

Would you have me be everything I’m not,
forsake the only road this heart has trod?

Vestibule

2010-02-07T19:47:00.000-08:00

Weariness warps the day’s color scheme,
stuporous haze conjoined on dream’s cusp.
Wake to phantom memories, talk reverie to the air.

Dregs of normalcy swirl defunct,
retaining flavor of evening’s past.
Amorous hues color the filament.

While dreams may coax the wilderness forth,
body harbors the prisonous soul.
Left free to roam the vestibule of fate.

Amongst the wild abandon exulting,
eternal bonds coalesce from the mist.
Bound ethereal hearts in the unbound whirl.

The Tinsmith

2010-02-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

In that bumbling quest of self-discovery that may take any of us leagues across the volatile greenery of America; hop-scotching through the cow shit and granary; lost betwixt the state lines and time zones created by some invisible council to catch the sun’s fleeting brilliance in our own dimming greatness….It is the Tinsmith, the lost father, the absentee figure of manhood that drives our testosterone bones into the husky horizon of the setting sun. We are scouring the barrows, the hobo dens. We become denizens of the night searching in the old the hidden nooks of the world, for the forgotten, the damned, the scorned visage of manhood we’ve desecrated into battered mosaic; the coping mechanism of volatile adolescence, forming our own tablets of manhood, yet forever searching for the greater truth. The bristling hoary beards of fraternity, etched down in the hereditary blood of generations, the graveling voice of masculinity that passes on the wisdom of becoming whole.

The street signs wear, the lanes swerve around the bend, the dust catches up to the eye as the sun eclipses the distant land; what we scour for in the physical world is the reconciliation of our souls. These Tinsmith woes are a lifetime of excavation. The lure of freedom, absolute decadent sultriness in the unrestrained experience; no tether to scour desire nor quell the raucous abandon; the untamed mania of burgeoning manhood bubbles the cauldron of decency into the icy waters of reality. We search and search for who it is we are to become, how it is we are to become, and the only answer lies in the chromosomes passed on without advice on how to grow into those shoes. So we take to the road fleeing our internal damnation; for the mirror plagues us with the truth of our creation, and thus forsaking, we attempt to lose ourselves wholly in an attempt to find anything in its entirety.

Can the Old Moriarty ever be found? Somewhere in the pool halls and wino bars of Denver he seethes in his own lost quest of fatherhood. How can we be fathers if we don’t know how to be sons? How can we ever be men if we can’t escape boyhood? Lost in the wino thoughts and infinity dreams that the wind screams on the road, the broken mantle of responsibility shall lie shattered for as long as we continue to flee. The abrupt about face is the brake wearing catastrophe called truth. Where we end from there is the trial by fire within us all, on the cusp of looming doom, the end of the road (so to speak), where truth can no longer be outrun nor found, where the woes of home become the fabric of existence, and miles no longer mean distance but feigned instances of introspection….it is at this pivotal moment we must all confront the ghost of our own Tinsmith. Stare into those ethereal orbs and reclaim the volatile entity of our existence, the full grandiosity roaring through our veins; and in that very moment cross the threshold of fear and uncertainty, and hang up the road-time escapism.

Wrought The Craft

2010-01-31T18:57:00.001-08:00

Follow through on the screen,
every dream weaned on a broken scream.
Lush driven memoirs spill obscene,
cauterizing kisses taste of doom.

Windows break gateway eyes,
souls shatter in collapsible heaps,
refuse rising decadent fumes,
ingratiating sludge of depleting use.

Coax forth the soft-spoken tendrils,
fiending remorseful.
Lure from catatonia,
wresting flesh in obloquious delight.

Speak once to be heard:
excavate freedom,
emancipate dreams.

Kinetic Verse

2010-01-30T17:37:00.000-08:00

Bouzouki twangs,
Spirits buoy in solidarity.
Steps suffuse the beat,
Eyes stare into eyes;
Eternity.

Twined under rustic night,
Truth lulled in melody.
Spindling forms spoke naturally;
Whispered causality.

Movement hitches to halt,
Desire flutters in revolt.
Olive blood yearns for more,
Hellas alive in sensuous form.

Linguistic Satiation

2010-01-27T12:14:00.001-08:00

Emotional affairs:
Fling of solitary evenings.
Entrenching in desire,
Role-playing dream’s manifestation.

Conversation serving as intercourse,
Ripening the harvest.
Tongues dancing in harmony,
Agreement sprouting fortuitous hope.
Eyes glazing as words undress,
Thoughts masquerading eroticism.

Building with layered connections,
Souls twining through words finding
Barren hearts lapping promise.
Mounting into simulacrum,
Tasting, feeling, throbbing Amor,
Guising in words bodies never explore.

Stroll out sated
Leaving in wake
Love unconsummated.

143

2010-01-26T12:19:00.001-08:00

Remember when love happened face to face?
When words were spoken in earnest tongues,
Chemistry ignited by physical touch.
Cell phones have become a codpiece;
Fingers typing love, intimacy, secrets,
With cold buttons as the sole witness.

Remember when hesitation was a hiccup in speech?
What is it now? Waiting for words on a screen?
When did love become about “what did that mean?”
There was a time when grasping hands meant something.

Romance is being fueled by technological advances;
Filling in the voids of actual human interaction.
Truths are found out now through a cornucopia of mediums;
“I love you” is now plastered aboard screens,
Informing the world what lips should only speak.

Romance has become an informal whim,
Packaged to fit into bustling cosmopolitans.
Type three numbers to replace a word,
Then wonder why it was never heard.

The Creaking

2010-01-25T10:53:00.000-08:00

You always asked the same old questions; the ones with no answers. You’d blow ‘round these floorboards with the unrestrained fury of a man watching his harvest ablaze. Slight trembles--there were earthquakes in your knees that threatened to collapse the entirety of your being. Often I imagined that your eyes only ever saw the hurts in your life, as though there was a film blinding from the tempest all around. Those were the statue days. I’d taken to standing around mute, in awe of your spin cycle ways. With each jarring door explosion announcing your plagued conquest of another day, I honestly tried to scrap together some empathy. Your battle hymn was turning into martyrdom, the cause of your destruction only ever burned in your bones. The soul of your sorrows was a private affair that bled through the cracks in your skull. I questioned if you rehearsed it. Plights like yours only ever arose from violently desperate minds.

With each blow of your tongue you struck dumb your fellow proletariat. On the soapbox of middleclass you wrought the irons of your life, with every tethered revolt scarring experience onto your brain. You always claimed, “This shaking keeps me steady”, it was like a tremulous metamorphosis permanently stunted. Somewhere beneath you were fixing your second skin. You harbored molting dreams that you coerced into epiphany. After awhile tragedy and pity decided to blur. You took this as a sign.

You talked for eons about the possibilities, painting dreams like stars on a bleeding canvas; your attempts to catch the plasma were cosmically futile. When days crawled into the “magnificently bad” you were staunch in your defeat. You wore the mantle of woe like a taut second skin. Those epiphanies that were broiling underneath were quenched in the lava of reality. It was these moments that seared me in sincerity. For all the balderdash of broken dreams, these moments bespoke vivid clarity. The pupils of your eyes became kernels of a pain feigned but not often felt. Brooding in the expanse of a life driven by the seismic pulls of survival, you clawed in untamed ferocity until your wounds seeped too copiously. In these stolen moments of actuality, when bullshit and pageantry momentarily subsided, that visceral bond that twines every member of a family--the erratic pulls of acidic churns and chest wrenching pains we associate with emotions-- it was then that the rollicking stream of existence quieted long enough for us to see into the abyss. What stared back was our precious impermanence.

Zenith

2010-01-23T17:36:00.000-08:00

That moment the sun hit its zenith you attempted to set yourself on fire. Sometime before that you claimed almighty that you were dousing yourself in holy gasoline. I stumbled by with broken doggerel on my lips, you were so parched you would’ve accepted the kiss. You smelt like an inferno ready to conflagrate—it was a beautiful sight that the tourists would have loved to fawn over. Zenith means the peak is reached, let’s call it a climax of sorts. I saw the matches in your hand—this started to feel like a very real circumstance of self-immolation. There was a righteous frenzy of witches burning in your eyes. I could tell your brain was embracing the fry—suddenly the clouds overtook the sky. At this point you floundered like a heathen with a newfound cause. Someone slipped the noose from your neck, though you were still doused in the waiting inferno.

When I look back at the moments you tried to destroy yourself I have to suppress a smile. I always think back to the innocent spring days—you were blowing dandelions into the Zeus’ heavens; hoping your dreams would erupt from your heart into the cold catastrophe of the world. Those were times when your cheeks were ruddy like lobsters in the sea, and you had the decency to cry with me. Times when you punched back unjustly, and catered in the dealings of equally gross pastimes. Somewhere along the line you got it in your mind to become your own shrink. The verdict was your own permanent plot in the crust. You were fixing to have me be your elegy, nonchalantly unburdening yourself of the pleasantries.

I’m not quite ready to be the vicar in this story. Somewhere in the shallow pool of your eyes; inside the pious orbs of a merry soul that harbored its own sun; there burns a greatness of the saints. I’ve never understood the hurtling desire towards the grave, no matter how many times you recite the encyclopedia explanations to me. I just keep fixating on the cold corpse of withered vibrancy. I’ll have to remember the first time you kissed Sadie’s lips and stole my heart with it. I’ll have to remember the time your mom collapsed in the foyer and we clutched each other in infantile horror. These are memories that we are collectively drowning in. The fire of life can’t burn away all the horrible hurts, as much as you claim to desert the path of normalcy, the polaroid of your existence is aflame in me. One of these days you’ll hate yourself for thanking me, for stoppering your temporary dream---the Siamese struggle of solidarity shall not lie solely with me.

Curtains

2010-01-21T14:18:00.000-08:00

He remembered the way the curtains fluttered; every undulant ripple searing reminiscence amongst the synapses. He noted the sultry curl of the fabric, the slight colony of dust motes gyrating in the sunlight. He heard Ephraim cry out in the distance, some hazy dissonance reverberating against the window pane. Pulling aside the veil, he gazed rapturously at the reflection peering back. It never made sense. The eyes twining his looked like foreign soldiers about to die.

He could feel the death rattles rollicking around his skull. Somewhere Ephraim would be waiting in reprobatroy grace. Floundering around, time felt like a fresh jugular cut. He noted a certain lethality in people’s gait---an unrestrained violence fiending to escape. Without particular care he realized the room was ominously crowded. Bodies pulsated in sweaty exuberance. He felt the united plight of synchronized beating. It was like a bloodlust building to frenzy.

An insatiable thought began to germinate. Before fruition became a dream, Ephraim arrived. Ephraim exuded the type of calm that was necessary in world disasters. There was an eternal coldness in his gaze, a prison of emotion that remained caged. To shake his hand was to embrace the fleeting moments before death---an urgent struggle coupled with resigned finality. If you were a perfect stranger you would think Ephraim was capable of either terrific violence or rampant altruism. The reality blurred in the in-between.

The handshake was the sign. What proceeded next were perfectly executed acts of wild violence. At this point he stopped noticing the little details. His hands became busy ending life.

Ephraim left him to oversee the cleanup. His mind began regressing into more stable temperatures. Equilibrium’s hard to find in the aftermath of genocide. Squelching across the viscera he once again arrives at the curtains. They resemble kindergarten smocks the day they painted stop signs.

Lots

2010-01-19T13:08:00.001-08:00

Taken to solace in parking lots,
solidarity amongst the empty spots
and lonely lines.
Divided in indecision,
searching for a space to call mine.

Slowly becoming the beehive–
stinging with activity.
Swarming all around, a huzzahing frenzy.
Eventually receding, dim humdrum,
vast desolation is home again.

Time stands still in the vacant lot;
lost sanctuary of lore.
Betwixt night’s surreptitious kiss
and dawn’s hazy lullaby–
pavement speaks of forgotten times.

Curdled Cream

2010-01-18T12:35:00.000-08:00

The day the world realized I was no longer young was the first time I saw my corpse. I knew there was a shallow grave with my name on it, and accepted that tombstones were only flawed pageantry. Before that I was an erratic heart monitor caught up in the voluptuous highs and lows.

I was innocent at some point. There were mornings that I woke up fresh and virginal, and in the back of mind I felt like Jesus before he knew he had to die. I used to call those days the September of my life.

People would probably call those thoughts naive. Like the day I proclaimed your eyes were like a falling leaf. Often it felt like the sugary first lick of a lollipop. Sometimes it was so sweet you devoured it whole without even enjoying it. There was also that time you ran away from your pulse. Your lips tingled leaving mine. These were all stories in a head that once remembered them as true.

Without ever caring to look the sunlight caught up to my shadow. By shadow I mean the buried parts you can’t see. There was a legend once about a cave that harbored fear. I don’t remember what it looked like, but I was sure I was about to walk in. What floats to the top has usually been festering on the bottom. Lets call that curdled cream.

It was about this time I became blind while still being able to see. I often found myself walking forlorn in long corridors. My hands were like skeleton keys, I just never found for what. Out of a door came a haggard face that once could of a been a beautiful you. You were blind too. At this point we fumbled to clasp hands. They sucked together like blood hurtling down a drain. All I remember now are footsteps that sounded like gunshots. All that was caressing my hand was air.

If this story were a calender we would be in December now. What’s the word you use when you put horrific slashes through the numbered days? It’s countdown, I believe. Except instead of slashes you should imagine a fresh corpse. Note the lukewarm aura of heat, the slight curling of the feet. Marvel at what those eyes can no longer see. It would be a safe bet to say those eyes are dead. You would lose your money if you believed they saw less than you.

That corpse was me. All that’s left is to explain why I stopped breathing. Right now I’m being prepped to return to the earth. In about forty eight hours I’ll retire beneath the ground. There will be a marker that futilely attempts to encapsulate a life. Then there will be momentary grief that fades like colors in the sun. Before all this had to happen there was an organ called a diaphragm that moved like a metronome. That device no longer keeps time. It would be easier if you just envisioned a tourniquet right now. Sometimes you can’t stop the buried things from bleeding out. It’s not that you die from the drainage, but rather from the fact that all your secrets are spilling out. There was a cure for that blindness after all.

"Amber" Moments

2010-01-15T18:03:00.000-08:00

Soaring down Ocean Parkway
Like wild bandits from a fresh robbery.
Windows down, exalting in wind’s rapturous song,
Hair billowing the savannah tornado….
Amber tunes lulling the motor metronome.

Abusing the concrete in infantile zeal,
Each RPM tick announcing conquest.
Senseless chatter in the deluge days,
Ripe existence in the lush contentment.

How we raged like ragged strangers of the world,
Foolishly owning the sun’s light—
Capturing innocence with a button’s pause,
Silence rang to old age’s kernel.

Vibrant ran our tumultuous blood,
Seeking thrills and sputtering emotional toils.
Find a similar addiction, a rapturous substitute---
For none looms in the Amber aftermath of youth.

Vigil

2010-01-14T13:28:00.001-08:00

There was light in the cathedral
when you passed.
Flickering as the gurgling of your heart,
floundering flame of faith snuffed out.

Prostrated before some monstrous altar,
pleading to pictures for fortune’s reversal.
Mocked in silence as knees went numb,
pews throbbed in lamentation.

Light went out in the darkness of the house,
murmurs to heaven all but faded out.
Somewhere you floated to invisible ghosts,
where stricken voices fall on deaf ears.

When sense at last came around,
judgement mocked from a thousand eyes.

Serum

2010-01-13T13:57:00.001-08:00

Searching for truth in all the wrong places;
at bottle’s bottom, in beautiful faces.

Fixing the hurts by inflicting the wounds;
pain to mask pain, pity to mask doom.

Denial’s boon— to terminally blind.

Coping with life by courting death;
a flame forsaken, a willing theft.

At bottle’s bottom, in beautiful faces;
searching for truth in all the wrong places.

Constructs

2010-01-11T12:52:00.000-08:00

The hours roll to a hiccupping halt,
Like pompous cops flouting the law.
Rules are bending to break;
They only ever were words on a page.

Words get stuck on peanut butter tongues,
Like that poisoned well of buried guilt.
Safe-boxes harbor fear with protection,
What’s locked in doesn’t want to come out.

Lies are yellow, envy green, and anger red;
Spectrums, like life, bleed and blend.
A hue today can wash away;
Is difference created, or meaning made?

Thread Count

2010-01-09T17:08:00.000-08:00

Existing in sin,
If that’s what existing is.
For nothing equals to this,
Terminal madness of the hedonist.

Go ahead and blind these eyes,
Please plug these ears,
But don’t ever steal the tactile Shangri-La.

Feelings shared like a needle-drug-stupor,
Infecting with the high of co-existence.
The only real proof that life exists,
Grasping in fervor, the fleeting succulence.

Attempt to bind these hands,
Snip off these pitiful fingers—
The barrows don’t call quite yet.
This bull-rush of life stays achingly sweet,
Agonizingly attempting to shackle thee.

Every Jack Be Nimble moment burns me,
The wick of being smolders rapturously.

To when dust coats my bones,
Reclaims me in Gaea’s furious finality…
Time will scythe us all down when it will,
Yet every thread of this lifeline shall be cherished,
For Fate’s shear knows no true affection.

Gramophone Days

2010-01-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

Dying sunset in the park...

Watching lovers stroll in their cocoon–
hands entwined.
The world; crushed filament in their palms.

Gazing at the old maids puffing smoke,
rattling wheeze rambling in their lungs–
oblivious of contagion’s smothering reach.

Warped trees in some Picasso dream;
all angles, lights, and epiphanies.

Cars thrum like distant capillaries;
rustling, purposeful metronome flow.

Steadily turning towards another day,
spinning record of humanity.

Barrow

2010-01-06T13:46:00.001-08:00

Sense must flee before passion swells,
Else deception breeds in sorrow.
Vows of night, in the morning quell.

Beginnings ring youth’s endless bell,
Constant promise of tomorrow.
Sense must flee before passion swells.

Exaltation drowns out the knell,
Celebration on the barrows.
Vows of night, in the morning quell.

Too enraptured to even dwell,
Upon what could ever follow.
Sense must flee before passion swells.

Cracks arise on this wretched shell,
The doomed plight of being hollow.
Vows of night, in the morning quell.

An inevitable farewell,
Love-turned-lust shall hang the gallows.
Sense must flee before passion swells;
Vows of night, in the morning quell.

Plump Devils

2010-01-05T21:33:00.000-08:00

Always knew that lips were trouble,
two succulent scythes of death.

Inevitably drawn by magnet pulls,
then smothered in sweet insidiousness.

Maternal skirt-warnings rang in ears,
finally making sense to child minds.

Eventually we’re all swallowed whole,
though a more willing sacrifice you’d never find.

Wildfire

2010-01-04T12:16:00.000-08:00

Well I heard from some good sources,
That things aren’t going so well.
I’m hearing mighty war cries,
I’m feeling terror in my bones.

Statues are a’ crumblin,
Trembling like these hands.
It’s deadly all around us,
Soon will all be bloodstains.

Ticking tocks are mocking,
In their sage and silent ways.
Our frenzied footsteps drown it out,
Those whispering pleas to be saved.

I heard that this is the way things are,
That their most likely never changing.
The sound goes to my ears, I understand,
Yet hope doesn’t quite leave me.

I’m burning now, like everything,
The inferno washes over me.
In smokescreen pain it all makes sense,
then darkness finally takes me.

Oh, Nine

2009-12-31T16:03:00.000-08:00

A year ago I sat in this same crotchety old, worn leather monstrosity of a chair, with petty dilemmas fly-buzzing my innocent self into a cataclysmic oblivion of self-pity and loathing. I was a lost soul. I had just arrived back from a dream’s completion, a goals satiation, and in turn was faced with the reality that it was never enough to quell the wild things within me. Three hundred and sixty five day have passed since then. Most of them were lackluster and monontous; grinding my soul to a fine dust of mundanity, yet I persevered and arrived at the glimmer of glory that wavered within grasp. Education again imbues me with the wonderment of knowledge and challenge; heart remains stoically intact, never allowing a crack in the dam; and finally, the metamorphosis within, that sultry demon of passion and logic at constant eternal war in the purgatory of my soul, ah those incendiary bedfellows still fight for domain, for that is a fight that shall never abate.

The temptation of the 0-9 ends on this night. A child grown up not in the “eighties or nineties”, but rather what? The ten’s? The two-thousands? None of these wonky titles gives proper prominence to the decade of tumultuous living me and my generation have endured. Wreathed in the battle scars of experience, weighing heavy hearts with our penchant for rampant technological abuse, we are a spoiled, gifted, and world-changing group that rings in the “teens” of the two-thousands with an endless potential. We are the gateway to something greater, the conduit for change in this ever-shifting variable of life. As often as we berate ourselves with our beauty(for being great is condemned to vanity), we must not stay stagnant in the ashes of our failures, but rather rise into the inferno of a bleak, yet endlessly rectifiable future. I remain in these pious poet hours; half-dimmed room, and the hospital light screen reflecting my fervent, spectral visage— somewhere a skewed intellect is brewing, and finding an outlet in these words.

A year ago I was a mess of lost expectations, yet I can surmise that ‘10 shall be a more fruitful harvest for this soul. The love game is becoming clearer– illuminating its magnus opus inch by succulent inch in preparation of some ultimate epiphany. These renegade wants and needs shall continue to blur into incoherence, fueling on the manic search for desire's companion– somewhere out there our tune of loneliness is coming to an end... for the river of our dreams leads to the same pulsating pool of Amor. It won’t last forever, these infernal plights of mine, whether it be in ‘10 or ‘21, one of these forsaken years shall deem itself appropriate. I’ll meet you half-way, in this taciturn steadfastness to never relinquish control, you’ll slip in unawares one of these days and unwind it all. Never proclaiming to understand, just knowing the inexhaustible authenticity of beauty... of challenging every sentence and move I make...of never accepting anything less than the best from me...somewhere out there your seething as I do, in our failed attempts to reconcile the missing fragment. Until then the veil is lowering to a diversity of thoughts and experiences(may I not blind myself from the earnest viscera of true nirvana).

So oh nine, you treated me well, abused me some, but ultimately slapped me around enough to inject some clarity into my pompous notions of grandiosity. For that I thank you, and subsequently hate you, alas our love/hate relationship stays in tact. Oh ten, you flighty bitch, on the eve of your arrival I imagine I’ll be a similar catastrophe to the previous year, only a shade wiser, a year older, and considerably more scarred in experience. A cheers to that then; to the inevitable rollicking river of time taking another year, and brining us all along for the ride.