5/07/2023

lazy sunday

on a lazy sunday the pain doesn't idle,
i wash the outsides of my apartment windows,
straining on the inside ledge wondering why even,
trying not to fall out or daring i do,
taking a shower, still as watched prey,
detecting the calculus in a grid of water droplets on tile,
i see it's just a system superdetermined.
listening to ___ from twenty years ago,
it floods into my ears and out my eyes,
tears falls from the past to the present for the future:
when i returned to ___ and learned that joy isn't for keeping,
when i met ___ and understood the deceit of love,
when i roamed the streets a beast and came home a stone,
when i killed ___ through negligence and stupidity,
when i'll witness ___ and feel the freedom of loss,
each moment is permanent vapor,
blending into the spring air
flowing in through the bathroom window,
laughter and screams aloft.

4/28/2023

Each dawn I cling to wishful visions dreamt,
As darkness shows the truth, so light conceals
cherished nightmares unowned but lent
by generous makers of the unreal,
To see them born here would be to heal
one thousand cuts, which signal not
some unjust torture nor dare reveal
an innocence, upon waking wrought,
But do bleed anew with each vile thought.

3/28/2023

it's not good it's not wet like the underbelly of a petal
it's not green it's not pregnant there's no bliss
and now matter how i turn it it takes no highlight
plants no shadow

i wonder if left alone
if i walk away
it'll unfold and break into itself and just
be, and be alright

3/20/2023

large withdrawal

there's plenty of time to be late
so why not stand in the longest line
turbocharge my zen
here #3 of 5

poor teller
awful undeserving teller
a throwaway moment for
everyone here

want not waste not
is that applicable?
this place is a cozy wreck
there's ample space to suffocate
in a stampede 

it's my party i can cry if i want to,
sigh if i want to
die and i want to

my life in the line
actually feels fine
#3 of 7 now
moving on up

3/10/2023

o frost,
you call, imbue
my skin with deadness that i may not
touch the grassy softness of spring,
my mind with veils of ice that i may not
know the birth of joy-giving birth that i may
settle into familiar dark alone-making rest

for long asleeping keeping
still, and in stillness
stay, and in staying 
seek the signs, without seeing

until i can regenerate in reverse
and arise dream-divested,
hollowed, hallowed, starving for the onslaught of life

2/22/2023

Out on the trail founded by a hundred thousand steps 
of beasts and beat-upon men do I wind,
ill-received and undeserving, under then among then above
a roiling cloud face rippling from sneer into filmy impassivity,
concealing there a patient darkening presence.
Even here am I watched, ever here does it wait.

Out in the rain and among lone glories in a naked earthen sea,
within the sun at set and wind at rise do I sense
a growing lack, maybe there in the shadow of the fallen pine,
now maybe there in the groaning branches in mossy bondage,
an approaching nothing, like the nearing labored breathing of the mare,
burdened yet freer than me alza el vuelo do we silent partners climb.

Out in the roaring mist of the summit comes one
who is always arriving, who I never meet but always know.
High above in the tectonic song of ancient fire wails a threat
only I can hear calling back through time a vision blinding.
Within the joy of rest and divine affection of nature do I stare into the black
at the formless beast that need not follow as it here remains, 
that need not seize what it already owns.

1/26/2023

i took the shape from the cloud and put it on my phone
i took the call from the bird and lost it in the street
i got the thrust from the wind and tossed it in a drawer
i took the life of a lamb and shat it out
i got time to live and sold it for a watch

i got a timepiece and spent
time measuring time

i measured the correctness of the shape
the rarity of the call
the reliability of the thrust
the pleasure from the lamb
the value of time

1/10/2023

(in the style of aimee mann)

what a prisoner feels
it ain't wanderlust
no matter what the trial reveals
it's the chair, or bust,

whenever the right time was
to finally come clean
it wasn't worth the fuss
and without the means,

to lead the witness
or doctor the scene
they see a recidivist 
low down and mean,

in the game of crime,
you eked one win
(who's keeping score?)
called in the chaplain
to absolve your sin
(walk through the door)
we marked the time
when the lights went dim
(what was it for?)

1/03/2023

couldn't sleep,
three nights now, 2am
dream of school again, or
cemetery, similar vibes

broken by the hushed
sirens outside,
urge to piss, and
god it's hot in here

Mind,
subjugated and stupefied midday,
asserts its power at 2am
  imagination that tortures,
  analyses across time and space,
  pointless or destructive
  or destruction's the point?,
  painted hypotheticals,
  vividly self-evident,
  showy cartwheels,
yawn

an organ doing its thing,
not the soul, not
poetic, despite the poem
it creates of itself, awake

then, thankless and unseen,
eventual expansion into emptiness,
flush to the borderline
between consciousness
and -