Every last

When i learned to unplug
it was late,
   or far too early.
There was no sparseness 
left in the markings of my palm

i felt the one,
one boy sulking, stubborn upon steps
the grungy marble pride of old empire
a crumbling patina, vexed with time

i subsumed her next
one startled girl, petulant in herself 
a curtain swaying on divergent sands
with stranger fingers, careless left

we held the last
the actor, the lissome host of legion
nave without parish, 
 night without Polaris;
the abyssal yard which buried our fury.

I have to think about whether I even like this. Still, worth penning for consideration.

For context, I just finished watching Synecdoche, aka "what-can-we-do-to-Philip-Seymour-Hoffman-next!"

Seed of the Nothing Tree

The legend of wings falling endlessly into an emptied sky
I can forever drink vast blueness
from the thin lips of this bottle

Free-basing the river of lifetimes
Into the stench of a ritual vein
Coerced into reluctant being
by the passions of long dead thinkers
Like azure skies and topaz days
Taunted by a glaze of skylines
and lavish diamond fields of night.

Now quit this world of warm carotene smiles
whispered woods of lifted souls
raised high by earthen hearts and hands

Enough of these,
the cloud wreathed crowns of my paramour hopes
life, hugging a fiery thistle
licking hot twists about the tips of my smoking eyes

Like rough scales of forgetful carnage
old photographs immersed in flames
shuddering clumps of life fall from balance
like browned out oatmeal carvings
spilling onto cold linoleum fields of human rust

With an aqueous flicker
of granite partitions and inky land
Let the fingers in my head slip again
falling as sweeping lashes of cindery fogs,
over the brilliant eyes of hungry,
amoral fires.

- 1999

it was a very good year for delusions and poetry. may it never happen again ;)

But the night is far worse

The darkness is always itself, one.
   An unbearable burden of the sun
The slick sliver of tongue
   texturing the tactless light

for is not a bedroom lamp akin 
   to her folding shape, by a sea
The spirit shroud of bold bodies
   ensiform in the fearsome geometry of light

A silver cellar door 
   by the incalculable variability of days
 the shifty droplets lit through rain
  slinking broken insects upon glass

   the passing headlights - guillotines
  a lesion of deadly terminus

   It is in the contrasts of twos
where winsome winnowing leaves one
 i am lonesome by candle light
with a breath I am one

- 2010


I am sick. I am delirious. The cough medicine tastes like ass. Naturally, this appears to be a good time to write.

I am pleased with my first verse of the year. May you find it so as well.

In the Absence of Darkness

There are night-lights kept up in the heavens
For the little ones frightened by the empty
These sparkle, twitter, glitter to my eyes
But are lost amid the cobwebs of neon
That cover the skies I used to know

The streets are slick, broken as mirrors
Billions of lights shattered upon sidewalks
Shadows now bloom in liquid purple petals
Outstripping the glow of these sickly lights

The sky, an old umbrella with too many holes
We see glimmers, peeks, glimpses, no pictures
I prefer the woodsy, forested spots with their
Proper, honest-to-goodness quilted darkness
Laughing off the lunar end of a firefly.

- 1998

Es Sands

This the tale of fallen sand
Running past my greedy hand
There are so many who themselves
Were fated lives of living shelves
I shift the pile from hand to hand
To better hold a bit of sand
This keep of fingers clutching tight
Could not resist their shifting might
I watch them plummet down to earth
And smother men of higher birth
With fading breath I count for me
From the millions, but only three
"Bring my tale to other lands and
add your grains to another hand."

Hey

Have I told you you're a loser yet?
Did I ever laugh in your pasty face?
Ever tell you that you mean nothing?
Do you believe the words "I hate you"
Linger and play across my lips?
Can you possibly be less than you are?
Could you squirm and writhe like a worm
Being pecked apart by the casual beak?
Would your puppy-dog eyes bleed,
Well-up with undeserved tears
If I told you the esteems of cruelty?
Shouldn't you be shrinking from my touch
Withering under my Sweet 'N Low words of filth?
I know I should love your every part
Or at least be on your side, unwavering . . .
No, I've barely inflicted these lies on you
I'd hate to hurt me with you,
But you make it so hard for a loser.


- pre 1996