11/15/11, 4:45 am; A Story.

I suppose it doesn't matter to reason

dirty and drinking from puddles

who is this 4 am saint

offering only love from a cracked hand

outstretched after such a journey.

Free of you at last,

we who spent the last week

rolling and fucking in this

painfully fresh glow

of cardboard burning and you singing

songs you never wrote

as if I am to believe you.

Yes!

This is me!

I am fetally warped

and lying until you speak

with open door

and no more dying but to die!

This is excitement of life and love!

One boot in front of the other,

this is where it all goes wrong

so explain to me please

the look of mad joy

on my face!

You

DO NOT KNOW ME,

and it will be your lesson,

not mine,

in the mean

time.

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Dancer's body

to drive me mad,

clean house to spit

down my prudent throat

and I will

corrupt

like the virus

I know

ME

TO

BE.

No doubt,

I have played the weak card

far too fucking long.

My lungs are borrowed from dragons,

and I learned my lessons

in Hell.

Fuck you

fuck you

fuck you

I have plenty of hair to burn

and your stars

will mock you

and your worry

will smother you.

You never

should have

let me in!

Fall back on safe boys.

Safe boys, safe boys.

They don't know how to kiss

your legs.

October.

A Bad Night for Horses

I'm leaking important fluids

Picking crumbled edges of pills

from among stacks of books

and tapes and letters.

My pen tugs impatiently

on my finger

wanting nothing more than to write you back

and I haven't the heart to tell it

that there is no letter

asking for a response

and me

and my pen

are alone and leaking.

-------------------------------

Crickets with jackboots and whips dance the railings

and the night invents music.

The sound of shadows paints a prism on the ceiling

and I, stumbling pilgrim, accept the lot.

--------------------------------------------

the concrete ditch gliding worms

across the field

where stupid stupid children

feed their brains

with their heads up their assholes

----------------------------------------

Tongue, tongue

darting little bitch

daring fishhooks and fingertips

let me nibble the end

just a taste of furtive fruit

like a spoonful of jelly

I want you down my throat

tongue, lips, teeth

I want you in my stomach

tease from a foul mouth

with bubblegum sex

barely resonating

little bells of spit

-------------------------

Darling damned little doe

Dancer of sidewalks and bedsheets

I want to strangle myself

rather than not have

your tender skin

against which

to judge

my own.

-------------------------------

Smoke curls high to the ceiling

and carries with it my cock

to crow

early in the frugal morning

where I will laugh

like smoke curling to the ceiling

with an evil sparrow stare

and dance

to the golden night of dead leaves

when I will find lips and lips to fill me

with smoke curling to the ceiling

and my wings spread and tear lightly

to die

and die and die

--------------------------

We are cloud people

We appear as dinosaurs

and as locomotives

and as seashells

-----------------------------

I hope it eats you from the inside-out

this mud you've turned from fucking in dust

------------------------------------------------

Shivering six o'clock in a girl's house

looking with dim light for a blanket

opening closets filled with shoes

closing them almost blushing

as if I weren't to see them

until they were on her feet

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Grim lessons

staring at a spent ceiling,

strange yet coming sleep

relieving a weekend's plasma,

a blood-letting flooding my eyes

with a flame colored red

and daring my breath

to whisper feathers

that dream me someone else

some Me you won't know

and will not like

as if this bothered me

in my grim lessons.

-------------------------

Delmar

Numb hands dance with leeches

and rain washes broken glass

down the greasy streets.

An auxiliary of spent bottles

stands watch over my tired eyes

and cars dream lazily by

like cancer cells.

I am not undead, I am unbored.

Numb hands dance with cigarettes

and leaves,

always leaves,

always will.

--------------------------------

Sucks

when you really need pause

and clench your eyes

to ask yourself

"What the fuck

am I on

again?"

--------------------------------

Dancers

always dancers

know to rise to the sky

arching and aching

always dancing.

---------------------------------

We do not know

each other

ourselves

tomorrow

today

let's spend it together

?

Autumn Song.

Here is an autumn song, why sad stories hang in smokey air, the full moon being my baby my baby is mean is bad is no one's baby.

It's ok, momma, I'm burning candles and saying my prayers.

This bed is gonna swallow me, too many nights I've laid rough hands to my pillows and ghosts to twist some feathery little vapor out of the darkness, some gourd-faced golem to fill with secrets and lust. We don't lie while we're lusting; I don't, and I speak for the lizards and lightning but not for another dick-swinger.

I won't be home 'til I'm bleeding brains on some holy boulder, black as peat and sweet as honeycomb.

Samson is swinging wild controlled circles with the bleeding jawbone of a jackass, and his hirsute heroics are relegated thusly to a few scraps of paper to incite wars in some future where artists are dead and greed's teeth chew all.

I'll love anyway. There's not much else for us.

October Phoems in re: Girls, Anxiety, Autumn.

This fragile little leaf,

eyes like sad almonds,

she floats in flowers

and breathes gentle secrets

that ring of the tragedy of truth.

She scarcely looks further than the ground,

but when she dances and sings forgetting pain

she is often the only thing to punctuate my day

with a semblance of a smile,

with furrows finally carved north

with the volatility of joy.

--------------------------------------------------

Here we go falling

insane little autumn rodents

muscles bulging and hungry teeth

restless hands and frightened eyes

jumping from limb to limb hand to mouth.

Winter will be long long

longer than we can stand

so here we go now while we

can still remember our names.

Just don't worry

when I build a nest of your hair

and seal myself in with lead

until the lashes of Easter

massage my eyes

and stir my spine.

------------------------------------------

Relapse (with Ian)

What a day!

like a little skipping stone

we end it sidewalking

and talking from our assholes

in bright clouds of the wine

and love deep in our guts.

I am going to bed hungry

and yet am already bursting

with the thought of tomorrow morning

being spooned like butter

and golden cigarette butts

upon two no more well-deserving goats.

Sleep long, sleep well,

tomorrow we take Hell.

------------------------------------

The day unraveled in its nervous string,

webs of blonde anxiety spun through trees

and exploring my throat,

the last bittersweet guesses of my questions

whispering wind to your sails.

Sitting immobile my heart threatens to explode

like a blossom of sawblades to sever these shining ropes,

we will crash to earth like birds forgetting to fly

and meet eye to eye with broken ribs

and the wheezing justice of my anxious love.

--------------------------------------------------

Nothing's good enough for you,

nothing is real enough,

is honest in its permanence,

least of not I.

But I Am and can do no else,

and I am Real and can be no else,

and have Faith enough for nations

in my honest contempt for the ephemeral.

I am good enough for I,

that I am good enough for me.

------------------------------------

Desert nights I'm glued to the surface of the lonely fucking moon. Knowing you and I are sleeping alone, no matter who breathes by our side, stealing air from our parted lips. It seems too easy, we two wrapped in pages and doom, and some nights, these lonely fucking nights I'm terrified at how little sense it all makes, at the injustice carving chasms through the mettle of a heart. I've surrendered to my eyes a sadness that will shape me beyond the veil of death, and until then I will walk breathe sleep with a patient vengeance.

---------------------------------------------

Staring at Kandinsky (Morphine)

Staring at Kandinsky,

wondering where the water goes,

wearing a disguise of my own skin.

Last night shudders rubber through my veins

like a thousand needles of sex,

thirty hours of dreaming

I'm made of air and laughter.

Morning all great erections aimed at no one,

day all eyelids and drag,

afternoon all coffee and stuttering,

night all pain wrapped in moth wings.

The walk home is as all walks home,

indifferent to the sky's indifference,

praying for exciting stab wounds

and an end to your boring bullshit.

---------------------------------------

I am reminded of you in moonlight and pyrite,

worthless shines but honest stone.

My saviors will always lose.

My saints have always eaten the dragon.

Better to keep you with rubber bands

and photographs of burns.

I remember your skeleton hands

hiking across pillows and meat

to steal the crown from my temple,

not a second thought to the smile you've glazed

across my hopeful sleeping face.

----------------------------------------

Autumn is bleeding,

listen to dripping colors

and the sound of smokey wind

wrap itself around melancholic afternoons,

this bittersweet purgatory

an excuse to bind ourselves

in veined leaves

and assume a nature

not dissimilar

to the ground

we tread.

--------------------

Count your blessings in the wound

hidden behind your snake mirror

that we judge you only for who you could be with us

and not for what you actually are without.

Lord give me strength to find no schism between your two

and finally be rid of this gross malfeasance.

The Letter Opener

Somewhere in Iowa, I drank a lot of cough syrup and wrote this.

He stands unsteady, his eyes in his hands

the letter-opener still protruding

from his massacred left socket

"I'll cut my fingers off next" he mutters

"and then go to work on my tongue with gardening shears

and on my ears with chopsticks to the hilt."

I don't reason with him,

I've been too far gone myself

and I know that reason is dead

in the swollen, bleeding heart.

His screams are unnerving

as any who choose to scream alone

behind closed doors

and I can hear him even with the

key in the ignition, even idling in the street.

There was no telling him

no matter what he chopped off

what he butchered from his body

or scraped with scouring pads and lye,

her letters will glow neon in his universal night

her skin will wrap him haunting still

and O God how she will roll yet on his tongue

and sing poison bells through his skull.

The trenches of memory are dug deep

and filled with bodies.

September

A True Story

A melancholy Sunday, and yet you glow with the same lightning of years past and their verdant desperate grinding of soft kisses, nothing more, and how the tenderest ornament was placed atop the highest broken limb.

I dreamt of you, what with brown eyes searing a late summer's night of longing leaving, and awakening I found my bedclothes twisted into a limp shape of your fragile body clutched in my arms and us quivering in every night being the last night the last kiss the last knowing glance tracing your tattoos with my fingertips. Those summer nights I would have died. I may die yet.

You taught me love beyond reason and I've drug that cross ever since. I will wait on your doorstep trodden and I will sob this rock to mud, and I will never surrender your luster in my memory to these cold demons of rationale. Wait for me at the doorway to oblivion. You'll recognize my scars and I won't forget your little yellow dress.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have no room in my heart save for the desperate,

as the idiots go caterwauling safely to darkness

I am left alone in purity's embrace

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Boys Strumming War

I will not die for some stamped cause

let their children's boots tremble

not me, not mine

I can scarcely win this war of living

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Is it wrong to be so jealous of the ground you walk upon,

of the moon that watches you sleep?

I'll spend my days staring at setting suns,

waiting for the cloak of blindness

to make a religion of memory

and a faith of forgotten faces

----------------------------------------

Another Drink

It occurs I don't need another drink,

I don't need to walk on unsure knees

or fall asleep already sleeping,

to pour another glass of rum

in a houseful of friends already retired,

not one more ring of dizziness

to cloud my vision of night and cat,

and I will go to bed as unfamiliar as I am

and rest bashful sober and quiet.

A poet's work is never done,

which is why I'm a line cook instead.

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I spent today a grinning skull,

lost in the awful wonder of the world

losing all sight of the gunpowder lessons

hammered through my heart,

losing all sight of who I had Been, who I need to Be,

just sick with amusement at broken bones,

a shrinking banner of pride

limply waving in air never so chilly and heavy

with the smell of bedrooms and hair.

------------------------------------------------

I've found this beast bloating beyond my comprehension,

rearing up like jagged mountains that eat sky and drink daylight,

crawling on its belly through my gut,

pulling at my hair until my eyes roll back into my head

and I stare into nothing, nothing at all,

just the jaws of the End and the ripple of my sinking heart.

We are willingly drowning in a lake of roses.

---------------------------------------------------------

I'm creepy, man

diving into navels

finding none so deep as my own,

dancing dead little circles around lovers,

snorting state lines for kicks

and heartbeats pushing sweaters above waistlines,

just creepy and asleep

cross-legged

mouth sagging

bile

fade to wide-eyed concession

that this night was not mine to win.

Springfield Poems, 08/18/11-08/28/11

In no particular order.

I want

to taste your teeth,

drink your eyes,

drown in your lungs,

dance in your skin,

breathe your hair like smoke,

kneel upon your back like an altar,

wear your feet like a mask,

wear your hands like a noose.

-----------------------------------------------

Mill of avarice be damned,

I am not unwanted!

Ground to a pulp,

doth not blessings yet be cursed from compost heaps!

River rolling, my swollen ears float Me

to downstream chests of mud and silver!

The apes cannot fathom why you'd love this man,

where I why I am still still, shining coin in pale hand!

How sick every day to find love,

how torn every day to live!

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Alcohol

O sweet tranquilizer, cross-eyed womb,

excuse to hate and be hated,

to do and be done,

kaleidoscoping vomit to forget the day,

staggering pathetic morning still alive,

blessed blood transubstantiate,

words spilled from skinned knees

like ignored arrow through brains.

How the sentence would smart if my gun were sober,

what wake my actions would leave in the pavement

if my hand unwavering swung that axe

with a clear mind

and frightening eyes.

----------------------------------------------------------

I'm slobbering drunk and hungry

chewing on sunrise

my own two feet my own two feet

drooling truth while you swim in lies.

-----------------------------------------------

Shit, how could I forget blonde punk rocker;

we used to neck in purgatory.

"Ah, fuck it" he sighs satisfied,

faces away from everyone

and drinks his drink too fast.

-------------------------------------------------

I'm building a hearth,

palace between my ears and behind my eyes,

heavy wooden doors and a moat of blood.

It is my jungle, my lighthouse

my nuclear submarine in a black sea of quiet glass.

You are not welcome,

you will not shatter my tranquility.

You have proven to be anything but a friend.

I refuse to be anything but alone.

I hope to live my life as a thorn in your ankle

and you think of me every time you fall.

I hope to live my life as a bone in your throat

and you think of me every time you choke.

--------------------------------------------------

Chainsmokingpushupaholic

I stink with living

and am a pond brimming

with the frogs of discontent.

Let me show you my arms,

wrap you in lazy scars.

My eyes train towards the heaven of smoke

your beacon is lost in the fog of bleeding.

I have plenty of dry bones

with which to stoke dry fire

and your hair is made of straw.

I am the avatar of kerosene,

dripping disappointing oaths

to a cold curving pink god

one-night-love, this town dead in flame.

I will not stop smoking.

I will turn into a tree

and your spine will lean into mine

and roots will fuck the mud.

Who am I

who is this motherfucker

knowing too much,

saw him to lumber

treated so that his eyes are stain

and his hips fragile be balsa.

-------------------------------------------

Complete solemnity,

paper pulled from golem's ear

is a mixtape track list,

thusly are my feet glued to habits and sighs,

my face is turned and shorn and blossoming

in summer's final death throes as if to affirm

I cannot last forver!

I will flame unto you while I can still muster humble strength.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Doing the Twist in my bedroom,

just me and Nina,

5:23 am,

makes me want to drink more beer.

I'm missing the point

and don't care.

------------------------------------------

Bricks are red and bed is magic

Trade them for a life less tragic