December 2010
3 posts
Admiration is a pleasant past time.
Your loving lines remind me of a girl I knew To me she was the cats’ pajamas In my mind I fell in love with her little painted toes Sometimes they were the only thing I could see, curling over the branch above She was a climber, you best believe A fierce spirit in the form of delicate beauty All her life she went higher Exploring every limb While I stuck close to the trunk Watching her dance on...
Elinore
We were young and dumb. If you are old and bitter and keeping track, I have said two redundant things already. I’ll try to stop. It’s just not easy finding the right words. It’s almost as if each idea and feeling is just a puzzle piece that I pull out of the box in my gut and hold up to my tongue. Rubbing the edges along my taste buds, hoping to find the word that...
Ancestors
The mattress wicks my illness Gallons of sweat sucked deep to its creaking core I live in a dent, a small version of a crater As if I am some sort of fallen meteor There is a strip of pictures on my bed stand Of me from years ago Making faces in a photo booth alone I like knowing it will be there when I’m dead Like the constellations of star graveyards in the sky Proof through faint flickers...
May 2010
1 post
Softening Facts
We go on knowing Like the sun and moon Our place in all this Every day and night The earth thinks it has us alone While behind the horizon we would meet If just to blow a kiss like a fall leaf Coated in copper and tinged with the pain Of unavoidable change We both can hibernate Like bears full on the fat of the land We dream through our winters alone While our bodies eat themselves ...
April 2010
0 posts
No choice
The streetlamps hum with electricity And throw from their faces a dull yellow glow Like jars of old piss with candles behind them The street takes it, for it has no where else to go At every bend and every turn there is another lamp Till just outside the city The public power grid stops And the road breaks free Into the country it goes And never looks back Because even though it’s as dumb as...
March 2010
12 posts
Outpatient surgery
With an icepick ill punch out little bits of brain through the corners of your terrified eyes And when you quit blinking the demons running down the walls will be senseless shadow puppets You will shuffle the rest of your life like a deck of cards in a windowless casino Unable to sense the passage of time Worry, go ahead and worry because it will be the last time you do The carpets, paints, and...
No other way
The streetlamps hum with electricity And throw from their faces a dull yellow glow Like jars of old piss with candles behind them The street takes it, for it has no where else to go At every bend and turn there is another lamp and another Till just outside the city The public power grid stops And the road breaks free Down to two lanes Into the country it goes And never looks back Only forward...
A warning they don't deserve
This is a warning you don’t deserve You criminals, you killers, you vermin I need only to lose one more hair from my head And Ill start being about as forgiving as an old testament God Turning those who cant let go to pillars of salt So the animals can come from the woods and lick their eroding faces My soul boils for more stories of the regular citizen Who decides not to be so regular...
This is the time of looking on the brightside
This is the time of looking on the bright side When from our hospital beds we wake and into the streets we go On broken bones we walk facing the sunset Along the way abandon our falling hopes and regrets We will wake in the morning on the beach, our feet in the ocean Where the casts of our broken pasts dissolve in the salt water lapping upon us With Our bodies mended, and dreams still fresh in...
Empty Arms
We live in the nth generation The watered down, weakened, husk of a generation Back when darkness was on the face of the deep Colors were brighter, more alive Blood spoke wet and red rubies to the air Grass glowed green emeralds in the sun Today we look in awe at colored and cut glass Like the natives we trade our potential for baubles While demons grow fat and full of beauty, sucking the marrow...
The hunt
When the sun went down it took our hopes with it To play dress up behind the horizon and return to us in dreams we wake up trying to remember so we can tell our friends and no matter how far into the dictionary we have read we just don’t have words for the way it felt
Instead our dreams sound silly outside of sleep and no matter how many times we find that out we will always try again to tell a...
Fenrir kind of mind
The gaping maw of the great dog is open Foam pours from the curling lips like the froth of a mad sea The bottom jaw tills the earth while the top rends the heavens Staring into the abyss, screams are drawn from the faces of the terrorized Yet no one hears them Instead of going outward to warn of the impending doom, they are drawn in Like light on the edge of a black hole, unable to escape Soon...
Lack of subtlty
I am the dry water color Ready to fade on demand Ready to join the others In a cup of brown water She isn’t a fan of painting Instead she grips a marker like a mother fucker Lays down dark lines so thick she must have mushed the tip When her nose runs she rubs it, without a care her hands are covered in ink I can’t even be jealous The dark green of envy is a color not found on my...
Decomposer
Butterfly I will have your beauty as mine I’ll pin your wings back in a shadowbox Hang you on the wall to dry You should have stayed a slug Your vanity transformed you
Darling I will have the best bits of you Your years meant to experience I will turn to glass like an atomic blast So when you look back You will only see yourself, just older You should have never grown up No matter the...
wasted time
I kept waiting for something to fill me up
For my ideas to grow from one liners to fill the pages and spill over
But it did not happen
I spent hours in the car each day
Either hating my fellow man for being such horrible monsters
Or thinking about the billboards in my face, forgetting I am one of them
For your consideration
Maybe I should try harder to get you to talk to me, without crossing the line and being an imposition. With that constant fear in my mind (fear of being a burden, being something unwanted), I have come to a conclusion that seems safe enough to try. It is almost mathematical because it requires me to put in equal effort to get you to talk to me, as I have desire for you to talk to me.
Now that the...
February 2010
1 post
Throwing Darts
We kissed in the shadows of dorms Standing in the crunchy wreckage of magnolia trees Behind closed lids Deep in the dream Trying to believe that the one we were holding Was the one we wanted Struggling because the truth was kept from us By our own over protective hearts Lying because they must Deep in the oil spill of night When it didnt matter if eyes were open or closed We continued to kiss...
January 2010
17 posts
Telling Woody
Woody you old coot. When you finally died you left Liz with little more than memories. She was never supposed to be one of those sob stories, but she is now. Her memories can’t pay the bills, and they won’t keep her from being evicted. So I am yellin at you now even though you can’t hear me, I’ll yell till I’m hoarse and tired. Tired enough to fall asleep without thinking about old Liz, covered in...
Honest decisions
I will level with you Sometimes I get so caught up living in the now I forget there is even a tomorrow More than once I have woke up In the middle of winter Wearing flip flops and a confused look on my face Because baby Some people are made to be prepared I Am not some people When I was a kid I used to get so ahead of myself I would leave me behind And when I grew up I decided I am no...
Parting thanks
Darling I have picked your memory clean There is nothing left So obviously this is goodbye To all the poems I wrote About you sitting Indian style in thin pajamas With your privates pressed up against the hard wood floor Making me jealous of dead and sawed up tress I thank you You let me be young once When I had a free pass to make mistakes And ran up the tab To the time I spent between your...
Awaiting the gift of flies
My city is a series of lights and shadows Stretching out beneath me, piling up into high rises And walling out the horizon In every direction It is a cement and steel cat With filthy paws Sprawled out On the naked lap of a God Who has fallen asleep watching TV Unsupervised we go on honking our horns into the distance While planes come and go over head Just high enough to let our cell phone...
The What Ifs
I close my eyes as soon as my greasy head hits the pillow and the plush fabric pushes back against my stubble covered face. Right at that moment when the lids come down my mind is left staring into darkness so deep it recoils like a man on a ledge. But it’s already too late. The what ifs are on their way.
They explode from the darkness like a popping ember in the fire and burst into a blossom...
creature of flight (new response below it)
When I was a young man I had an eager little heart Which wanted nothing more than to beat for something So it gave willingly Letting the world carve years from my bones Leaving them hollow like a bird
After all this time I still cannot fly
Now my heart is light Holding just enough beats for one more song
So I sing My body is a stone feather dreaming to be A speck of dust So it may finally rise...
Response to Creature of flight
Did you read my poem? “Yes” he says Silence “I think you are trying too hard” Fuck you I think it’s concise I don’t play with myself here Or call attention to anything But I remember He is the only one of my friends Whos criticism I respect So I look again ‘My heart is a stone feather’ It embarrasses me like a yearbook photo And looks twice as...
No name baby
Theirs is a story often heard yet rarely talked about outside of immediate family. It is one of the many secrets handed around behind closed doors; a sad little thing that is collected with other sad things.
For all who heard the story the child died nameless, stillborn. Only her sex was known. Even the father believed this, but only because the mother never told him. On some unknown day when...
A very weak man
I’d just as quickly squeeze your mouth shut And stare into your terrorized eyes As I’d tell you I love you With that same breath I would hiss a curse that splits my lips And passes my grinding teeth Promising both pain and suffering I’d love to squeeze inappropriately The soft parts of you That are prone to breaking And feel their delicate nature Beneath my callous one And know...
Beautiful Survivor
Looking at the night sky She whispers “This is endless” It rolls off her lips Like smoke from so many cigarettes I want to believe her but I know better Always on the hillside I find her Her hair growing into the grass Her face blooming from the dark earth And tired from the trip I lay down beside her I often remind her she has died And with hardly a pause She goes on ...
Wishful thinking
Professors, strangers, and friends In that exact order Told me never to start a poem with I For reasons ranging from plain bad taste To betraying a warped sense of self importance So instead I start with their advice But make no mistake this poem is very much About me A dreaming heart who sleeps to be Waking in a world of my creating Beautiful southern cities with ashes in their breeze...
Permit this
She made me feel like the clouds outside after they empty their guts and the earth says nothing. Grey I know my mind plays tricks on me. When I am sleeping it goes through my memories and paints them brighter while hiding the parts that a second coat can’t fix. I feel like a kid when I pretend to believe that’s the way things were. But I need to feel that. In the face of age, standing at the...
Pre recorded
On the back porch and in the fading daylight I wait With a Parliament between my lips I let smoke slide It spirits into the updrafts, quick to dissolve Around the house, against the brick wall Metal dumpsters freshly emptied, having smoldered all day begin to cool The wet rust smells just like sucking on a penny tastes I hear your bike rounding the corner Tires hitting the cobblestone Throwing...
long walk home
Fallen cherry blossoms So thick on the ground They feel slippery beneath my feet Walking up hill with less than two blocks to go I can’t help thinking she is looking down Over a city that has never quite recovered From what some old locals call The war of northern aggression She is no southern belle And I’m no gentleman Still we found ourselves there In a southern city long since burned Where...
One act in a window
A narrow street lined with row houses Bends like the elbow of a cocked arm Resting on the hip of a city Right in the middle, at the joint A slim granite faced house rises up from the crooked sidewalk Like a sheer cliff over rough water At the top there is a little white window between brown shutters On the other side of the glass a windowsill rests It is covered with years of paint Which in the...
Again with the memories
Somewhere out of sight and up above there is a sun Its copper light slides down the sides of row houses And makes alleys look nice Every so often plants snake their way up Splintered telephone poles And hang suspended in space Catching the copper magic in their leaves Which glow like wet emeralds Moments like these you want to remember Through the fear that it doesn’t get much better than this...
Richmond is my life experience
The sunset in her image A frame perfect for regret And the porch swallowed up Every little bit not committed to memory Years fucked on Creaking mattresses and jealous roommates Slow peeling wallpaper from walls Till cold mornings and space heaters Make everyone look dumb