Thursday, December 19, 2013

A Dream Within a Dream Dreaming

How much repetition
before we loop back
to originality?

You finally released
the locking sphenoid
that kept me clenched
to your ghost;

apnea aside
I rest easy now.

Now
I easily rest
aside apnea

and she smothers
me seldomly.

Sometimes
I can’t breathe
when I’m asleep

and I awake violently
to snakes and hornets
on my pillowcase.

I dislocate my shoulder
fending them off
before I awake

again
beside myself.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

3rd and Union

I’ve adopted a new
singing style.

I should make it clear
I don’t sing.

I watched the water
beneath the giant ferris wheel

and felt compelled
to fantasize with my eyes halved.

Nine doors before you
before you

and I don’t know
what I’m trying to say.

How do we say this?
How do we harness the wind

that carried me here
and carried my fear

and flew the colossal walkway
seemingly illuminated

to the dead end
of waterfront public seating;

from the west coast
to the Midwest and now

and earlier
and the shivering organs.


Sunday, December 1, 2013

Town Guys and M-Rods

Drinking ashes
out of an aluminum can

I know now
I only have two original bones
in my cryptic body

and they both need
chiropractic manipulation.

Like a series
of zippers stitched
diagonally
to the left half
of your brain,

we got caught on
theoretical threads
and scurried off to the stream

to fall in love
on Lucifer’s blackest beach.

I was wearing
your best lie
wrapped in muffled
confessions;

I couldn’t read your crooked
kiss –

like (you were) saying

he’s a beautiful writer
vs.

he writes beautifully.

Monday, November 25, 2013

Illuxion

I found a lucky penny
yesterday
from 1982.

It was heads up
facedown
outside of a gas station
that sells liquid cocaine.

I clenched my teeth
whilst staring down

listening to the sound
of rushing water
behind my eyes.

All the things
I’d say face to face
came in parabolic waves
of repetition
and OCD.

I reached down
to pick up the penny

but a black cat
emerging from the shadows

crossed my path

and ran off with

the damned thing.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Favorite Part of Letter Go

The woman from Norway
delicately broke my ribs
one by one in the dark

hyperextending
my sentimentality.

I thought about you
in the darker

how novelties from May
wore off faster
than your mascara
on a rainy night.

How the hours since August
have been mocking me
and the one that follows
is a bullet:

how I can’t stop time
from reaching my eyes.

I thought about us
in the darkest

but it’s goofy thinking
that led us here

and goofy thinking
that can reverse

these fractures.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Bone Flour

But my arsenal
is depleted
and you’re so far

away.

The sky cast
an autumn apparition
before summer started
it’s tyranny –

when you became
so cool
with your cast-iron
codependency.

And in the scraping night

we’re killing ourselves
with plastic thoughts

while the delirious massacre

occurs in the still dead
still.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Friday the 13th

The first whisper
of a breath of fall

coming in
through the cracks
of the window.

Your head rested
comfortably against my dreams.

My failings still stirring
on the pillow –

my eyes
not adjusting to light;

I will never go
back
to sleep

pinned perfectly
between your arms.


This bed spells
death

when 1 a.m. is always
rising to the surface of the sun.

It’s hard to know
which chair in the corner
will help me

stand

these dreams

are going 
away
faster than how you left;

those nights
when we stayed

home.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

To Little; To Late (An Ode)

When she called
over a year ago
from a hotel room
in Chicago

and say no more.

She had hips,
          not too much;

incandescent.

She was the acme
of smooth
delicate traces.

She stared
at a foreign headboard

and I withheld
the true depth
of an engrossing sentiment.

Say no more –


shades of green.

Monday, September 9, 2013

The People v. Existence

She sleeps
beside me

but I have no idea
who she is.

I knew her once
very well

some time ago.

Maybe a week
or 10 years
have passed –

I don’t sleep anymore.

As a shadow
of my former self

she is merely
an apparition

and as real
as this night

falls upon the crooked earth

in a gold car
with the windows up

she sleeps beside me

but neither of us
are really present

here.

Friday, August 23, 2013

The Doomsayer

He stands with the sign
the one that says:

the end is near.


He knows every fear
and every moment
every moment
every moment.

He took a temporary leave
a little over a year ago.
When the sun came out
in the bleak of winter.

Biding his time,
he broke a shadow
and found his old sign:

the end is near.


A grueling pace
for a now dying summer;
a snail’s pace
for the new face of humidity.

And the dreams here
repeat
repeat
repeat
repeat.

The sign’s color is faded
and dusty:

the end is near.


You cried once,
and only once
on a gorgeous summer morning.

Unseasonably cool,
and the last day
before the world stopped turning.

the nightmares here
repeat
repeat
repent
repeat.

The sky holds its breath
and the furthest you can get
is dead where you stand.

The sign is your only forefront:

the end is near.


We lost everything.

Well one of us did;
scrambling to collapse
at least until the plague has passed.

But the death is all around us,
and he speaks in confident whispers
before a world upside-down.

He knew before it was gone.
He has reprinted a new sign:


the end is here.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Sadness with Mustard

Nowhere
but in the alone
and vast

where nightmares don’t end
after you awake.

Might we all assume
that this sobbing
means sorrow?

But this crushing

it rests on my tongue
behind my eyes
and entwined
in my stomach;

left me talking to any specter
or apparition
dumb enough
to haunt me

in the alone
and vast


and we need help.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Listening to Vanna in mid-December

If the roof caved in
eight years ago

then where have I been since?


Dreaming you back to life
in the most somber
of states of being

on the most melancholy
of nights.

And every middle –

I just had to die.

Sickening deep depressions
with the intensity
of a teenager’s broken heart.


If the rain had only
skipped a night

If you were merely
a memory

if you weren’t even that

when the roof caved in
eight years ago.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Laying Down Blue

Brazenly proclaiming

            it smells like
            the world
out here.


Wandering against the sun

I watched your eyes
melt down to

(the semblance of)
your cheeks.


And then goodbye –

the sound of
the wind
splattering

against the trees:

art imitating explosions
screaming


and falling backwards.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Orbital Teaspoon

And I open one eye
every now and then
in floating silent dark

to interrupt the delirium;

it’s like thinking
without dipping your soul
into
the craters of the moon.

You make me
delirious
when I close my eyes;

maybe that’s what heaven
is like –
skipping artificial rocks
on the manmade pond.

One more
delirious
drive down
the deserted cul-de-sac

closing with the
ever-cryptic

I’m close,

bring a sweater.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Queen Anne's Lace

Shadow: here

internalizing barbed wire
wrapped with circular
coherence
around your brain.

The durability of youth
must’ve forgotten
to cast it’s light
upon you.

A softer, westward storm –

perhaps in the wake
of further division;

we’re splitting decimals now

fractions of coagulated
bean residue
hardened and encrusted
on the rim
of the bowl

in the dishwasher

that never runs.

The Russian Doll Dream Sequence

One wing
within another fluttering

through the graves;
through water

magnifying your imperfections.

You stole my camera
to take a picture
of a warmer breeze –

something to look at
when you felt cold.

The colder days
inevitably came,

the warmth in
the negatives dissipated
amidst despondence.

I felt a wave of melancholy;

I stood still
deathly tired.



(repeat)

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Man Out of Time


The birds were awake
before Manhattan.

Tesla was tinkering
with something revolutionary

and dawn had said
goodnight to Twain.

Nobody attempted
the dark blue
then

the stumbling
on the repetition.

We’ve allotted enough
out of the sliver
of molded blinds

and we’re all paranoid
when we get too close.

United we stand
untied we fall

and ashes to never rise.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Dreamlike Sensations & Perceptual Distortions


Some miss
the invincibility of youth;

I missed
the invincibility of youth.


Choking on
the distance in the distance –

          the air
          contaminated by longing –

slipping back
backwards
into the world of fog;

relearning how to dream.

They say
these issues
tend
to resolve
themselves on
their own

but I am malnourished
on the 53rd floor
of this modern apartment.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

C17H27NO2 HCl


I had Captain Crunch
on the morning I died.

There was a bitter
almond aftertaste
that lingered
in the sweet milk residue.

Internalizing the fear –

the black shadow –

clutching at my throat
and scrambling for grey skies.

The air is airless –

counter-clockwise memory
on the inside
in the onslaught.

Contrary to popular belief

it does not cut
the roof of your mouth.

Dance the Dalliance

1.

We’re living longer
but not happier;

holding on to the receipt
of the pillow
in case it gives you
the one dream
you don’t want to have.


We live in houses
but not homes.


2.

I sit on that hill
in the corner of the suburbs

the one by the stone bench

and pretend I’m somewhere
afloat.


3.

and if intimacy
has been ruined
by forces
out of your control

then you have reached
the event horizon

and must close your eyes.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Ellipses Etcetera


Tight noise –

          stifling and archaic:

          scissors cutting through
          your teeth like
          construction paper.

But these scissors
don’t do justice

to the soft delicate
curves of your body.


You live between a month
and a mountain

where the air
          is fractured

and everything
tastes like
poison.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

5306


Feigned fainting;

you feignted

while the moon
cracked
over the city

like an egg
over a frying pan.

One fat raindrop
wished falling
and dreams
I can’t remember.


Your aortic pulse
breaks through
the stillness

through your sternum.


There’s blood in the everywhere;

there’s no blood
nowhere.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

SkyFalls


Fog leaked
through the trees

and spilled like smoke
onto the world below

in the dark of predawn
in the dark of predawn
in the dark of predawn.

Maybe I'm hearing things
in the background

or seeing things
in the distance

through eyes closed;

maybe the cranial storms
subsided long enough
to notice

I've never been awake.


Maybe not.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Metal Spoon; Empty Coffee Mug

I woke up
alone
in the backseat
of my car

yesterday morning

statically trying
to outrun the static.


There's no time
in dreams;

it's easy to see
how one could get lost
in them
so often.


And the door is ajar
in that apartment
you dream of,

but the door
to the dream is closed;


we're all so lonely
in the cold interior
of our moving cars,

aren't we?