--------------------------------------------------------------------
August
I dont want to live the simple life, the uncomplicated, average, day to day life that has become the american dream. I dont want to die with wrinkled skin yet a calm brow. I hope I grow up to be, if anything, more eccentric then I am today; hallucinating, screaming lectures on street corners and in public parks. I dont want to live life if I dont live it fully, if I dont suck every drop of marrow from it.
Yes, people may walk by me and say "what a basket case, what a waste of potential" but I will turn to them with eyes of fire and say "No, it is you who are truly the basket case, for every moment your soul screamed jump and you said no, for every second when you longed for something and didnt search for it, for every time you loved something but then gave it up for a dream you didnt conceive and rules you never set, for all your self-righteous self-torture. I see the wind and feel the glowing of the sun! I am at all times!"
And then, if I am lucky, the passers will drop a quarter into my cup.
---
Who knows what I'll do. No me. I figure the future will come either way though, wont it? They all lie when they tell you that you need to figure things out before you graduate. Thats bull. You dont need to figure anything out.
---
:theextentoftheseabsurdities:
theextentoftheseabsurditiesisblurred
and one of these days imgoingtofind
somebody some body some fallen
body of skinandboneandflesh
to fall with and fall to and maybe
justmaybemaybe i have already but
whatifnont whatthenwhen you cease
are you you are you is are you
gone iforgetyouspeakwordssometimes
forgetispeakwordssometimes i dont
speak anything lately
hey youknowsometimes i insistinthis
insistinthismistrusthat im your
(what am i?)
reinsert commonphrase itgoesunspoken
but manifests
im in a mood with no one tospeaktoeverto
speakto ever to spillandto share
andto breathto anothertoneed to
todreamto
tobleedto
and i cantrecall toomuch more of
what i. want.
but cannot have
i oh my oh dear its
late its slightlylaterthen beforenightslost
its toolateandicant think anymorecant
walkthesestreets with
drawnshades streetlampsthe empty church
i cantbetheperson
i wanttobe my crossisgetting
farrtooheavy andicannot seetheheavens
any. more.
thoughiknow iknowiknowiknow
theyrethere
theyrerightthere iknow
---
I woke up at a strange hour today. I wont tell you the exact time because you may well think less of me. And Id ask you to use your imagination but I have found that the imagination is vast, and slightly eccentric. So just assume it was a typical hour, whatever you deem typical, that's what time it was.
Anyways, I decided to go for a walk at waking and realized right away that the dew had fallen with a particular thud this morning. It helped me decide to skip church but I really should have just opted to go back to bed right then for it was the only real idiosyncrasy about today and a rather perfect illustration of what the rest of the sunlit hours would prove to be like: the very seconds resonated with a flawlessly sphere-shaped thud.
---
So I got past today.
As usual the morning was the worst. I've found that if I make it until 10 or 11 I'll be ok. So I put on that fake smile of mine and I watch the clock for 10 like a hawk. Every moment is a little bit later, after all, and that gives me hope. That every moment is a little bit later.
And I know that none of this is what you were wanting me to say. And I really am, in the deepest part of my heart, sorry for that. But that's really how today went. I pushed things out my mouth, got refilled thru my ears. In government my opinions were like kittens, the way I was passing them out to anyone who would take them...but I didn't actually care.
---
There must be something wrong with me. And I'd like to take this time to be lied to horribly. So lie to me. Please. Convince me I've been sick forever and that all of this will make sense when I get better...that if I smile and dont believe I will wake up.
---
I want to go back to when I believed in everything and knew nothing at all. There is just something very wrong with all of this. I can do nothing but struggle on and on to feed this hunger of my soul but it will never get FULL.
---
:jericho turnpike:
i have
i've lost myself to you, to your
skin. it has replaced mine
and now i have two
making thicker,
and thicker i am with two skins;
tears shed for me from your eyes,
green with touches of brown especially
with that shirt you wear, especially
when you are tired from late nights
(the red brings out the flecks of gold)
i touched your skin and it became
mine and i lost myself in you
then found that
you hadn't lost yourself in me.
funny how things fall apart like that.
---
The shards of me are too sharp to pick up...too small to matter.
---
Speaking of tomorrow, how will it ever come?
---
It makes no difference you know, that we need oxygen to breath and wherever you are walking you're just moving the earth, wherever you are looking is down.
---
I find myself adrift on a frozen sea, who knows how long I've been out here. The tears of time have saturated my skin until I cant tell the difference between the sorrow and I any longer. Maybe we are the same. I crawl like a child, stagger like a drunk. The sky is falling down like rain and I can see it and I scream and scream for the answer, for any answer.
The whole world is on fire with unanswered questions.
September
I'm so sick of speaking words that no one understands. Haven't you longed for it? Havent you just wanted so badly for people to understand that you just write and write and write and think that maybe in all this mess someone will understand something? Havent you wanted it so much you feel it in your bones? Havent you longed to cut yourself open, let your blood and soul pour out and scream, "Look! Look! Cant you see? Cant you see me? Do you understand now?"
---
I used to want to be a writer. I wanted to write the story of myself. I admit that I'm currently the leading expert, and even that I have a certain gravity towards writing that may help in such an endeavorer.
But I have no misconceptions about my poetry being understandable. Or readable. And I'm anything but a short story writer. If I had the talent of Salinger I would write a few pages on some isolated afternoon and stuff everything I am and know and believe to be true into it without anyone noticing. But alas, I am not Salinger. Never will be. And I couldnt go anywhere near the novel form. Novels eat fat little ramblers like me whole.
What I am, in the end, is a thesaurus of undetatched remarks on 300 different subjects. I believe I am, essentially, a narrator. I want to introduce, to describe. I want to roll up my sleeves and point to scars, pass out photos and momentos and little slivers of myself.
---
: an abecedarian:
Alone, Bare, Confused
Disturbed, Emotionally Fucked
God, How Is Jesus?
Killed Lovingly
Must Never Open Up Possibilities
Questions Referring Somewhat To
Undivine Vengeance
With X-rated Youthful Zeal
--
Here I lay as always still and breathless. I want some more mirrors sideways...who really cares what's behind...tonight I feel like more understanding then that. Tonight I just feel like more. I could run away I guess, run away tonight and never look back. It would be no victory but I dont care. I dont believe in victories and I dont care what's wrong or right. Oh if only I could just fly away. Become a raven and take my leave of this plastic place. Maybe I'd turn to a dove once I got far enough to breath again, bleached as the night turns to day...
He still makes me suicidal. Somehow I always expect it to fade sooner or later. But it wont. I wanted to cut my wrists the first time I saw him what...4 years ago now? And I want to cut my wrists when I see him now. I know it wont do any good. He'd never understand. But I still want to pour myself at his feet. I want to give him everything, everything I've ever been and will be in the future, all my dreams and my despairs... My blood. And I know it's not worth being given to him. I even know sometimes that he's not worth it. But still... You think I'd have known the relationship was doomed.
I could baptize myself in tub water and finally fill this hunger, maybe... find that certain truth I have always lacked and spent my whole life trying to make up for. I know I don't watch where I'm walking when I should (or more correctly running full speed) and I know I never will. I've got the scars to prove that love and life and consequence (my favorite of the fickle bunch) has had it's day and it's way with me...you can hear it in my whispered cries. It was a small mistake but sometimes that's all it takes to turn your world upside down. But anguish and determination match my eyes, I guess.
---
I need to stop watering these paper flowers and believing they are going to grow.
---
I cant believe the world will ever dream like me. A new cavity moved into my heart today and the more I scream the more it seems Im thru.
Help me pray for the death of everything. Just help me pray.
---
You know, you can kill yourself every day without ever actually dying. I'm afraid sometimes that's exactly what I do. Kill myself everyday. I was told yesterday that if I took the weight of the world off my shoulders it would most likely keep spinning. I dont know if I believe them. I dont know that I want to.
---
:breaking things:
its all in the way you turn your head.
i can see the reasons why you
hurt me like this, loved me
like that.
and when you think im not looking
its when you are at your best.
its when im at my best too,
to tell the truth.
but your words,
your words always came at a price.
and your lies,
your lies flowed like honey, honey.
its like you said once when you thought
i could not hear you
"an ocean is an ocean no matter
who sticks their feet in it."
but change has never been the issue
as long as we dont count
the expressions on your face or
the reasons i lived inside of them
(and this is where i turn my head
to keep
you
from seeing
me)
---
"Why do you hang out with me so much when all I do is frustrate you?" I asked, joking.
"Because I love you and I couldn't stop if I wanted." Josh said.
And I don't know why we have to keep going thru this...not pain but...ache.
---
Here I go again, screaming my lungs out trying to get to you. I'm watching the days burn out like cigarettes, just a few more drags todo and the way I'm saturated in hope and gasoline you know I'll light up like a giant T (for Timberline) behind the football field.
For once in my life I'm beginning to feel complete, yet I still want to ruin it. I know that if I climb up to the top I'll just throw myself over again. Same as always. How I love that crunch.
---
:necknapes are a fragile place:
hymnals
and half moons still linger
wistfully
in the air. on days like yesterday
the tufts of revelation
drift independantly toward the clouds yet
stick their insistent fingers into today
none the less
and even though its sunday morning
{or because} i'll scrible prayers
onto your eyelids
and leave strips of my broken soul
on your pillow.
chemical imbalances have all but crippled
and quietly
the early october leaves shed
themselves
and i still dont know why
i led us here.
im either too cold or
burning away,
but we drink straight from
the faucet
parched and eager as we are.
believing we can both be washed
in the rain
and the blaze.
believing we can be cleansed
in the immor{t}al blood.
---
OCTOBER
See, I havent lost. You've lost. You lost when you refused to let me speak and invented another language that didn't include me, with sounds I'd never heard.
--
We all fall victim to idolatry and phases of placing each other on pedestals spawned from self doubt or self hatred or just naivety sometimes- to just being kids sometimes. We are all searching for clarity but avoiding any kind of stability within ourselves.
We are all so concerned with creating a new kind of anarchy that we fail at staying human.
I' trying to say something but I'm not sure what. I think I may be trying to apologize. Its my state of mind the last few days, grasping for some kind of message to put in the bottle. I wish I knew what my soul was screaming to you.
---
Welcome to my mind. To my right you will find a garden of chrysanthemums, feel free to pick as many as you like, just beware of the butterflys. They bite. To the right are hula girls dancing out my insanity, feel their beat. And tonight, tonight my friends, Mars will be particularly bright.
So I will fall into an unintentional rhythm, and maybe use capitals in some poetry for the first time ever. Drone on about how I fell in love with Whitman before I ever encountered his sad self; how good intentions, weathered yellow are always saccharine in the beginning but sour in the end, maybe about how finally I no longer want to taste like an open wound.
He is heaven past all control, he is a thousand secrets; I want him to taste me and not get blood in his mouth.
---
The crimes I commit, I commit full knowing the cost and I pay it more than fully. I have no absolution for what I have done, though I suffer more than fully, though I bleed more than payment for my deeds.
---
:contemplations on rearview vision:
I. i love you
but i need you to trust me
you said to me, once.
quietly, i slipped your wrists between
two books, like dried flowers, ready
to be pressed and saved for all time.
i did not answer.
II. i held your gaze for so long sometimes
in fear of dropping it-
imagine.
imagine if i could never find it again.
imagine sitting up at night-
-trying to avoid the nightmares that i have all the time now.
they're all about bleeding before you
and finding out i seem to have
overlooked that you
were never strong.
III. i remember running my tongue
over the grooves at the top-
wondering if i could lodge you there
in the roof of my mouth
alas, i did swallow, and the
courseness seeped down the
sternum when it was meant to
go down my throat.
IV. i was born to a woman
who most desperatly
needed to talk, before another
the same, never getting a
word in edgewise:
this has left me wishing to
remember you in the cracks; the
spaces left that need to be
filled;between doors that will
never quite close.
the way you'd
start a sentence and then
thinking perhaps its best not to
close your mouth.
V. i do know that one day
i wont need to pick out your
wrists anymore. i am hoping
and yet afraid, that
ill find them not so beautiful
as in memory.
because
sometimes i think, as i turn over
corners of you that i want to remember
maybe you werent the one
after all
it is
these second thoughts that kill us.
but for now i return home each day
with the theory that love is an idea that has
unfortunately already been though of
and the kind of pressure on my spine that
august must feel
when september sleeps in.
---
I'd be bad for you, I know it, with all my addictions and routines, all of my midmorning panics, midnight tangents. All those emotional suitcases I drag around would tire your arms and we both know how you will insist on carrying them.
But oh the ways I'll try to take care of you, love the pure essence of you...
No, I've only said love once and I wont start saying it all the time now just because I ike the taste of it in my mouth, because I like the way it feels on my tongue.
---
Here I am, sitting on the pavement, soaking up the rain. Like a weed selfishly wanting what everyone else needs.
NOVEMBER
I always find every day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I wnt to take, all the books I want to read, all the people I want to see. Every day ends too soon for my liking and I dont really know what to do about it. There's just so much and so much urgency to everything.
---
Do you want to hear something really seditious? Love is everything its cracked up to be. It really is. That's why everyone is so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, dying for, living for. It really does color everything in the world pink and sunshine.
---
:bloodied stars:
and the styrofoam souls on the {un}faithful
have been stretched thin from too many purplebruises
and the blessed cups of the pristine
are parched and gasping for bloodlet sin
we are all burning in this atmosphere
hot air balloons with paper wings
glossy blackwidows with silken limbs
we have all seen opaque november fall
apathy, we are, we are all apathy
numbed at the edges
ever dripping in scarlet halls profanityorconsencration
lithelyseeping iniquitous lips
we all pulse at a sort of crimson cadence
twisting finger around metal bars
marveling that we are not vanished
under the tatered wheels of time
--
I was driving around today, coughing up my lungs as usual. and I saw all this broken glass in the gutters. It was so beautiful. I thought faintly of Becca's poem.
But then I was thinking every piece of broken glass you see, along the side of theroad, in garbage heaps, in dark little corners of your town you try to avoid...they were once a part of something. Something beautiful, something useful, something that might have made a difference.
Each sharp and shiny fragment is like a lost soul, cutting the finger of anyone who tries to pick it up. Dont think of these shards as waste or garbage. Remember: this was beautiful once. This was whole once. This could have easily been me.
---
I was just thinking that when you are divided among the thorns and the petals you realize that the only difference between inferno and inflorescence is proximity and prospective.
---
I'm not much of a prophet, really, and even less of an interpreter of tongues. But these things, genetics, and faith...they are tattoo permanant. You could burn me away but the ink will remain, stains. And I dont know if that is a blessing or a curse. Maybe the world isnt as black andwhite as all of that, to draw lines between blessings and curses, the plans of the devil and the plans of God.
I dont know. I've been speaking in poetry since I was a child and sanskrit isnt easily translated .
---
:juniper breezes:
hope beyond hope beyond
reason beyond us
into the beyond skies blue we've always dreamed
existed floating someplace else
above the hell hole of our broken lives
linked together by distance which never fades
or shortens like shadows do in the early
afternoons of winter sunshine
cold and far and white
pure but harsh; cloudy without clouds
reeking depression and limited options
such as waiting out the weather and
hoping the earth warms up and
hoping the string shrinks and
we find the arms and flesh of the other
to sink into deep holes in the earth
the graves in which we'll love
when the earth fades into ashes
and we wait
for something
anything to hold onto
and to believe in
beneath that hole in the sky we call
our own
---
Words are simply words and I have been misspelled for years.
---
Yesterday I was beating my soul for make it bleed a single drop of hope but today...today I feel strong.
---
Its definitely been the kind of morning that lasts all afternoon and right into the evening. I can hear the ice melting from my bed and I have a perfect view of my rooftop weeping for the sun.
The only real message I have for you right now is to check your pulse. Its a sure sign of if you are listening to the call you've been issued.
You are just a piece of the puzzle really, so I'd advise finding your place sooner then later and give up blaming all your knowledge on some fruit you ate.
And I really believe that the best of you is still hiding up your sleeve. So shed this skin of yours and be born again. It all starts with an ending.
DECEMBER
Lets go back to the time when we were friends, or better yet, strangers.
---
:i am judas:
i keep wandering back into the familiar places
ive already been with
the same old dirt
same filth, same pain, same blood
there are cracks in the sidewalks and
everythings out of repair but
they keep peeling back the layers of brick
blocking windows and doors and
you breath in and out and whisper
of other times and things we saw once
upon a time when we smiled
and didn't open our eyes
i know exactly what you mean when
you say it seems like life's been getting
everybody down these days
and that we're just followers of the trend
sometimes i wish i was still in denial
judas, who hung there dangling over his vineyard
he sold himself for 30 pieces of silver
i bartered my soul for 10
---
I'm imagining myself in all of the softest places. The turn of your neck when I call your name, the curve of your jaw, the light in your eye the way you wrap around me...
---
You see its difficult, always trying to conquer the impossible.
---
:simply titled:
hair mussed and its not even
morning. wearing the clothes i wore
yesterday. on hopeless nights i'm
afraid of opening the bible and finding the pages
blank
-i may be going crazy
{you know the drill
this isn't new}
dear jesus, the world wags.
shattered shells of nostalgia
-broken in my hands.
a breath of something unseen
vacancy can be more memorable then
-fullfillment
needing something makes it valuable
wanting something you dont need
-is love.
one day i realized i was alive
-one day i realized i was rotting.
but now i've realized that
anyone could leave at any time
even me. regret.
we wish for God.
to see so softly
the light regret.
misaligned like ice. howling like the wind.
outside the window.
such common beauty.
such desecrated dreams.
-in the silent tranquility of the church
the seeds of destruction
meet you at the door.
i bet the fish are all gone
-or dead
i bet the rain is all frozen
icicle stalagmites, stalactites,
from ground to heaven. reaching.
the bigger the clouds the closer
to the earth they seem.
-the farther from the heavens we feel.
you understand, all fallen were once good
some just dont need to fall to get where they are
wearing sin like a penchant lapel
all the closets are wide open.
finding a confessional in the desert
we leave caravans for salvation
convinced there is something more.
-is there something more?
i listen to renegade choruses
singing about something i dont know
fasting for days to learn it
horizons never end.
if you go searching you'll
just end up where you started.
and you'll find they crucify the angels
and that we're ll too stunned to move
as if repentance is just too high a pillar
for a mere human to stoop to.
writing with a stolen pencil
speaking with a stolen voice
my head hurts and i feel i'll
always wish i were...
---
:and fuck the stars too:
you are my hospital bed
nowitseems the hollow
ofeverything itouch
turnstogranite or some form
of chemically unbalanced molecules
(i am dead weight longing for an ocean bottom)
these dreams they stretch on and on and on and on
...she whispers...
"but you cant bring down the sky for me"
the breathing stops
desperation takes hold of the sun
and your love, its all but new
repentance is vomiting
and nights spent
repeating everything i do
all i could do to hold you
hanging myself on the other line
drowning in this closet...
slashmeopenuntil
myribcagefallsout
or
let the angles kill me.
---
You ask me why it is so and I ask why I wouldn't want it to be.
You ask me what could be worse.
I'm afraid of whatever it is I am searching for.
When I stop wanting it...well, God help me, and when I finally find it, ah God...God save me.
---
:so close:
and i was so close
i could almost hear
my heart
collide
with yours.
and i was so far.
i would have died for it.
i would have died.
some nights i wish i had.
