Untitled

There are clinical terms
That I could use
To describe the things I am feeling
Just like you can take a pin
And slide it through the flesh
Of an insect, an animal
And mount it on a board
Take a clean white paper
And carefully label it
Preserve it under glass
A stagnant moment in time
Freed from context
And easily digestible

I've seen scorpions in resin
Dangling from leather cords
A decorative motif
To dress the necks
Of rebellious youths
But like the skulls on leather jackets
Or in baroque paintings
They are only a reminder
The suggested recollection
Of the existence of poison
It will never instill a shuddering panic
As would a hard dry carapace
The feel of parchment paper husks
Shifting against the softness
Of a woman’s breast
A coiled tail
Above a beating heart

So while I would gladly provide
Something clean and neat
With thick cardstock
And leveled corners
Bathed under clear slick gloss
I simply have no words
That equal the weight on my chest
This pressure against my form
And a shifting against myself
And frankly I am adverse
To the feeling of pins

Untitled

I am a waterfall
I spill out over
The island of my bed
Which in turn unravels
In sheets and blankets
Cascading onto the floor
A thing which in turn
Is currently represented
By murky pools of black void
The conceit of carpet
Existing only but for
Object permanence
A memory
Of feeling and stability
Beneath my feet
The black out curtains
Consume the rest
Drink up all but a sliver
That bathes my world in blue
Not enough to see by
But enough to be reminded
Of the abyss

Reflections

Standing in a bathroom

The muted notes of horns

Slips through the plywood

Unnoticed

Had I not noticed it anyway

Instead of a mirror

There is a painting of a snake 

A stylized cobra

Dreaming of skateboards

And motorcycle jackets

So instead I stare at this

Pink Himalayan Salt Stone

That could 

In some sense

Provide for a bit of reflection

Just not the kind I need

But mostly

It doesn't really work at all

Nothing here

Is really what was intended

 

It's not really

What anyone wants

In the corner

There next to the door

I see ants

Swarming over something

That I can't quite make out

When I get closer

I see the corn kernel body

Of a dying beetle

Collapsed in a divot in the concrete floor

Shifting one of its remaining legs

Unable to get out

And I want to do something
But I can't seem to move
So instead with one arm

I find the door

Pinnings

They fall for me when I am up

When I am a whirling rapturous thing

A dream they can cling to upon waking

A whispered sense in their depths that suggests

Magic is a thing

That could actually exist

An implied but unspoken promise

Dripping with what might be

Seductive candy coated insinuations

Of things to come

They yearn for something

That can't be pinned down

Or neatly stored in small keepsake boxes

A life outside of the chaste treasured totems

In scrapbooks and photo albums

They want to be brought to flame

For something that inverts their insides

And redeems them

Of their acceptance

Absolves them of settling

And of their resignation

Under the weight of could have beens

But a map is not a doorway

And I am not Atlas

So there will be times

When the world is to much to bear

And I won't have enough light

To ignite the stars

So when reality crashes in

In it's inevitable rising tide  

Carrying routine and disappointment

Rhythm and rote

Then even the afterimage will fade

And in the end they leave me

when I am down

Shatter ★★★★

Sometimes the sky is meteoric

Black sheen glossy obsidian dark

And I can see the hands reach down

From trembling inverted mountain peaks

As the framework rafters bow and scream

I see the silver fish

In the sidewalk gutter gardens

As they move the moon carves up their backs

Making empty nests for writhing birds 

That speak warnings in whispers

Of winter upon us

The dark is coming to lay down 

Like a lover at my feet to rest on my body

To pull me under and eat my thoughts 

Until I am empty and hollow and freezing

Until my head is just a radio

Filled in between with the cries

Of the sun and the weaving of the waves

Of the great invisible rivers 

That run through my fingertips 

And point at the north star

Everything is slipping downward 

Some intimate black box hold

Like barbecue lenses and train turntables

Catatonia speaking cotton

Bach and the invisible harmonica dreaming

Quilt weighted beaches 

Remembering wet sheets and drowning

And then you say something
And the world sets back in

Everything clear

Obliviate ★★★

I was going to write a poem

In beautiful words I'd express 

The way your ghost had returned 

The black weight,  the cherished pit

But you aren't worth

Being caressed by silk soft words

To wrap around you in gossamer glory 

Instead I want words

That splinter and rot inside you 

Your existence has become a blight

On my precious memories of you

And it would be distressingly easy

To wrap you in shimmering anamnesis

To see you through a lens turned back

So maybe once you might have been

My summer

My poetry 

But now you're just an asshole

As Intended ★★★★

I wrote a poem on this page

I had addressed it to you 

But I erased it

Line by line 

The only part I kept was the end

It read

We play this game 

Where we never ask questions 

And never get answers

Which was really everything 

That I had wanted to say

And I suppose you could ask

Exactly what I meant

But you see

Miss Connected ★★★★

When our bodies were divided 

It was discovered

that we were full of emptiness 

That there were great gaps inside us

Each of us a vacant night sky

Pinned with particle stars

The only reason I feel 

Your skin under my fingertips

Is because every atom of my being

Yearns to push you away

Some suggest that

Under certain impossible circumstances

We might become unphased

And slip into each other 

Our bodies converging

Into some inextricable complication

Perhaps in some other parallel place

Some ghost of a dream

The strings tied around our fingers

Would have wound a different way

And my hand would have found

The empty spaces in yours

Maybe this is how things happened 

To someone much like me

And a person I could mistake for you 

But as things are

We just brush against each other

Feel the flaring insistent sparks of a current 

That composes the very things that we are

And walk away

Let's Run Away Together ★★★★

Let's run away together

I've grown tired of waking up in these sheets

That smell like the past

Of obligation and complication

Lets slip away under a shroud of night

With only the light from your eyes to guide the way

We'll walk barefoot on dew coated grass

Through hidden mountain passages that take us

To a home that only exists

Bound between thin cardboard leafs

Lets get married

We'll find some small town chapel

Full of well-meaning old hideaways

Who we will beguile with decadent lies

Like fine chocolates and silk from our smiles

We'll set up camp like stalwart explorers

Eat fast food and jars of peaches

We can make blanket forts of the pews

We'll drape honeysuckle from the pulpit

And bells from the windows

We'll open the doors to the moths and fireflies

And anyone else who will come

If they ask what it is

What we're all on about now

We'll tell them it's their high school reunion

A bowling league

The Armistice Day Singers

And we'll smile and say "come in"

You'll wear a key from your neck

And a band of Russian amber

And I'll wear a dress

Lined with baby's breath and butterfly wings

Instead of sharing champagne

We'll put on matching crowns

And raise our hands to the sun triumphant

Conquerors of everything we could be

And owners of everything we couldn't

And as the cold night air settles in

We'll play music on my ipod

With not a single song about love

We'll find a best man and make him toast to the absurd

And the pointlessness of life and loving anything

And everyone will be confused

And nothing will make sense

To anyone at all

Except for you

to me

And me

to you

Untitled ★★★★

I love to watch the way his body moves

I like to see the plates of bone within his back

Flex into a seamless crease above his spine

The shifting of the cords that bind his shape

I like the branches that rest under his neck 

From which he hangs the bell that holds his heart 

When it rings I feel it in my breath 

Because I see it in his eyes

Fluttering like the wings of moths

Shimmers of iridescence and the memory of midnight

It threads through me in a tightening embroidery 

I could feast eternal on that moment

My eyes devouring his 

Without his knowing he has become

the dagger in my breast that severs me

I watch his hands as they shift and tense

The line of his neck, that place I could bury myself 

I watch, waiting for him to break

Give himself away in a glance or a smile

Some unguarded elusive ruptured suture

And he'd shuck his skin like coils of birch bark

Let himself unbind unravel and peel off in layers to rest at my feet

So bare that I can see inside him

Presenting a core of being to which I could press myself 

Like a flower among his pages

A moment where he is nothing but what he is

And I would know it like I know the coursing of my blood

The singing of the spheres

A truth unintentionally and so softly given

Piercing and momentous and tiny and frail

Painted on his body in the way the surf engulfs the shore

Broach ★★★★

The world feels like a day dream

The lights and colors are cutout cardboard

On matte black backing

The city swallows the stars

And my mind diffuses my memory of them 

The images I conjure falter

In disconnected static

Just like how I can't remember

The look on your face

I only recall how it made me feel

The pressure in my throat

Inside me your eyes are a blank void

A curtain to hang the stars

Your hands are fragmented pieces

Like exploding shrapnel

Nothing holds me

Nothing keeps its shape

Nothing is certain 

Other than the feeling of my breath over my lips

The rise and fall of my chest

I can hear the shuddering sound of it 

And I want to fill it with your name

But I know it would just slip away

A dying dislocated notion

Dissipating like fog or a dream upon waking

And I need some small thing to still feel real

I need some way to keep you here