(untitled)

Fading in and out of it
Grasping for the limbs of
over-hanging preconception
Smashing and breaking
and faking my every shard of sanity

DON’T… don’t let them take me
Take me out of this sweet psychosis
Where I am not a constant

WHY? Why, I am just not sure…

Pins and needles sterilized
Poke and prod at every cushion
of social incompatibility
Crushing and breaking and faking
my every bit of sanity

STOP… stop right there!

DON’T… don’t take another step…

RUIN… ruin me until I break
into tiny fragments of
everything I never was…

(Untitled)

Willpower gagged in the closet
Choice, I bribed with my stash
Hopes are locked in the cupboard
This Guilt on wear on my back

And so
   I’m drowning in this torrent of distractions
Fractured and fleeting
Listen to the harmonies…
Far away… muffled…
They used to be so clear

Before long
   I’m beating myself with a Cross and a stereo
Unbearable silence
Lost in the glittering melee
Overtaken and distant and addicted to surrender

Denial and a fragile creature
Forever seeking shelter

Willpower scratching at the closet door
Choice got into my stash
Hopes growing restless in the cupboard
This Guilt wards off the attack

(Untitled)

Look at me,
I’m gone now…
Whoever thought the skirmish was a drill?
Didn’t you see the archers in the culdesac?
Feel the hail of Cupid’s quills?
Didn’t you spot the hairline crack?
Did you try to cheat death with will alone?
Powering through the essences,
   seizing all messengers that came bearing word
Of the empire ever since the Golden Age

How you and I used to be…
And how it suits me so well as a memory

Tell Me

Tell me!
What is it that you love?
And will it be there for you
   When push comes to shove?

Love is the cactus alone in the desert,
Love is a phantom haunting the anxious opera goers,
Love is the last matchstick in the book
   The jinx when the wind picks up
   The last wisp of smoke
   The aftermath with no flame

Love is the debt and the debtor,
Love is the stuffing escaping from the teddy bear,
Love is the bottom of the bottle
   The commitment to madness
   The last lukewarm sip
   The taste in your mouth the next morning.

Here she comes now…
The way this quiet room grows to be a grand hall,
And the kings and their sages and the knights and pages
Affix their gazes

All but one set of eyes falls upon this flower
These eyes are mine
No one else’s…

Love is turning iron to gold,
Love is the vanishing sandbars,
Love is the sap squeezing through the bark
   The realization that you can’t move
   The panic when it engulfs your legs
   The artifact you become when it
      swallows you whole

Love is the ride home from the desert,
Love is the what drove the phantom to doom,
Love was the time before the flame was mastered
   The innocence in the fig leaf
   The brightening image
   The searing heat when a hand
      touches the burner

There she goes again…
The way this room shrivels upon the stem,
And the jesters and jailers,
Keep me company instead.

All I can give her
Is myself
And I can tell by the look in those eyes -

That’s just not enough…

The Lines Are Down

One lonely man
At a payphone in the dark
Paying to be heard
   under the glow of one light
As if that were enough

It takes more than light
To wrench the shadows from this
   midnight paradise

Well-beaten paths are only tame guidelines
So he’s wandering the wilds with no
   destination in mind
Just walking along in obscurity’s dominion
Never so free
Never so overwhelmed with insecurity

Atonal

The truth cracks upon my skin
Like nine tails of leather
Hardened with blood.

As if the bottom gave
Under the burden of the almighty fact…
The vast expanse of all that I cannot claim,
The silence within that which I can.

The joke’s over with now,
Choking on the last laugh,

Still in awe of the art of saying goodbye…

(untitled)

The mouth of a poet
   is always heavy
   for the burden of the yoke,
And if he is worth the show
He will cry off-stage

For the anguish and the joy
In memoriam
Remembrances of the oven

Exacting

Essence always tags along…

   Raw skin and rope burns
   in this one-sided tug-of-war

Games and candles are incompatible tender:
Accepted in all locations

The purest sense of the situation?
   First, turn around…
      Take two steps down the hall…
         Breathe deeply for three seconds,
Reconstruct models in four dimensions
   that encase the opinions with a cleverness
That wears the pelts of wolves that crept in sheep’s clothing

Damp Timber Mythology

What else could it be that courses through man’s chest,
More than the blood and air, the fluids of the sustaining body?
Than that terror, that abandon, that pang of suffering…
Anxious is his form in motion, disquieted and desperate.

Though this man is ablaze,
And so, too, this man,
Indeed, though these two labor through burning streets,
The flames do not singe the delicate tissues…
The mirage of endurance,
The log fresh and moist amidst this inferno.

How long have we cowered behind these linens?
How long have we dwelt within these maddening rectangles?
Embarrassed and blushing amidst the jagged peaks,
Jaded and distant upon the rolling hills…

How we despise, how we loathe those things
That cannot be perfected by the ruler and drawing board!
Are we not sailors affright of their own boat?

And so we are!
For this man, and this man, too
Are just as a soldier, taking refuge behind so many palisades,
Shaped and imagined.
He is, for sure, afraid of what lies outside his fortress in the many directions…
What terrors lurk upon paths outside the moat?
What terrors lurk upon the path within?
Indeed! What terrors, it seems, must lie where there is no moat, no paths, no fortress!

And so this is his sickness,
This is his disquiet,
This is what stirs in his mind, itself ablaze, thinking of an unburning log amidst the flames…

I Am…

I am the opportunist
And I charge no fees
Ask no favors
Have meager needs

   On the bottom of the pond
   There is only mud and water
   The catfish is wise
   For it knows well
   That even gods sink in this world…

I am the trickster
And you needn’t humor me
Laugh a moment late
And already you’re deceived

   Long-live the fall of the cards!
   Perpetual motion
   Leaves wriggling free
   Certain of unknown places

I am the curmudgeon
And you’ll never know why
Too sharp for my own good
Are these talents of mine
   Behind the mountains
   The Sun is still setting
   Around the corner
   The road stretches on
   In your blind spot
   There is I


I am the one that always gets away
I am the one that runs into the hills and is gone
I can throw hooks
Break chains at the weakest link
And I can find the blemish in any circle thought perfect
I am the stranger you always recognize
The friend you never do

I am the weeds
I am the mosquitoes
I am the rain clouds immemorial