Faithful Rider

Twice a day for thirteen years
No skip, no shirk, no sigh
7:35 and 5:05 repeating
Rusty crusty toothy grill
Squeaking squealing round and round
It chews her up and spits her out
While judgments drive on by

Digging Deep

my dreams like dogs sniff out fertile ground
and dig up the earth to fill this gap
they caught the scent of your sweet smelling breath
on the canned food aisle
not yellow and bright like a first corn harvest
but blue and cold like the moon

just a one-time thing
that just happened
inert
not propelling with meaning
adults make choices
to control the world around them
but are inept to control the world within them

as sure as early spring
calls back the leaves too quickly
I wrapped you up like a stubbled baby
in my arms, displaced from real life
in the wholehearted moment
for fear of impending storms
I burrowed in the lie

Hollywood

The sidewalk name drops
The lives we collect
One glossy page and
Camera frame at
a time; they carry on,
Dancing With the Stars,
Flickering night walls
From some far away,
Removable state.
Memorabilialand:
The purest figment
Of the collective
Imagination.

No Rest

An ache of 27 years
Is twisting through the night
And I can't change the way I am
To make it all all right
And If I knew what's good for you
I'd have done it all my life
Instead I'll twist on through this sleepless night

A mansion of a thousand doors
That lead from room to room
No hallways and no photographs
They all lead back to you
If I could find my way outside
My real life could resume
Instead I'm stuck between the black and blue

Love: A Sticky Subject

Love is confusing. 


Agape
Pie
It's so simple
Not complicated at all
It never says goodbye
Or anything at all

Philia
A slice of pie can pack a punch
And ruin even a large man's lunch
And though it won't hug
Or smooch on your mug
You might find true love at first munch

Eros
I would simply be over-the-mooner
If I'd found your sweetness much sooner
No need to pretend
We are more than just friends
We can go to my place for a nooner

Apple

The archetypal apple wishes it could be
A tasty provider of nutrition
As it rightly ought to be
But carnal temptation, objects of affection
And falling not far from the tree
Is the reputation the apple was given
Before it was even a seed
So misunderstood it sits on the shelves
Scanning our eyes for beliefs
Longing to be just picked up and eaten
Without considering Adam and Eve

Don't Go In There

Flickers from the silver screen
Dance before me in seduction
Unfelt
Unreal
Their pain to me
Is but a star in the day
Removed like a scent
A flavor
A hint
Inert and amorphous at best
Stranger scenarios than I've ever seen
Stumbling blocks and stupid decisions
Appalling to the pious perspective
The virgin sensibility
Pressed into the seal of my story
Yet I loathe to look away
Even pantomime in private
And dream of things that cannot be
I yearn for the night all day
A degree removed from reality
A subversive creature breathes and grows
A beloved parasite
That leads me from light
Onto disgusting streets of freaks and worse
To be a fly on the wall is all I desire
Yet from my lying mouth
Well-rehearsed lines spill freely
And before I know which way is up
I'm falling fast and deep
Rubbing elbows with locals
And up to my knees
Stinging needles and scraping skin on sidewalks
Cracked beyond recognition
Until I wake
Sweat-stenched
Filth-wrenched
In satin sheets
Credits crawling up the wall

Vicarious

party animals

when I slinked into the party
I felt naughty eyes upon me
phosphorescent, burning through me
softening lips begging to kiss
in the corner in a whirlwind
we stared beams of adoration
and conjured spirits with our eyes
while every other soul turned cold
and floated away like ashes

Ants

A corpse in the sheets

Saltines at my side

White crumbs all around

The ants march on by

They heave and they hoist

Many times their size

And that's how I know

They're stronger than I

Where I got this photo.

Twins

I spy you from across the room
Those big bald heads
Like silver moons
So simple, vast, and open wide
While I, equipped with higher mind,
Spend muddled hours swatting flies
And dank ideas pass me by
Clogging up the river so
My beaver brain dams up the flow

But you two,
My inspiration,
Your story's not been told
The life you live
The love you give
Lives right behind your nose
And though, like me, you ache and grow
Simple pleasure is all you know
And you'd think it silly
To seek for much
Any further beyond your toes

Bittersweet

Many early mornings I had lain awake
In tasteful dreams
Of kneading and caressing, smooth and supple, as it were,
Luring me afoot well before God's hour
Down the dark and sparkly alleyway;
I'd stealthily shiver past shattered glass rivers
And bus stops disguised as bedrooms.
I'd nervously knock and wait for shuffling;
A groggy good morning or nothing
But quick, darty eyes full of what?
Shrug, shrug it off and back to the senses
Flooded with butter and other
Scents that hold on tightly and don't let go
Like your grandmother's last hug
Or an illicit lover's gaze.
Drawn in, I absorbed it all
Every last drop, straight to the heart
I lapped it up and begged for more,
But the maddening elixir
Grew more bitter every brew
And spurned me, red-eyed, flailing into frenzy
For some balancing flavor,
The one magical, smoothing, soothing
Addition or subtraction to turn it all back
Into the the bearable, presentable, enjoyable
Treat it would never be again.

Orage de Merde

that sinking feeling in your gut can only be described by words of karma defeated sighs giggling lies and versions of truth that bore all the way down to the rotting roots of the seeds you've been planting so carelessly you toss them into the wind but the shit storm brings it back again so batten the hatches and tighten the latches to your disgraceful mouth because whether you're ready the weather rolls steady and the vain is pointed south

>x)

Errrbody poops? Shit.

"Take my knife, please!" - Rodney Safetyfield

A: Roses are red, violets are blue, here is a scarf, I made it for you.
B: It's nice but I only wear earth tones.
A: Unless you are in outer space, all tones are earth tones. Idiot.

Millennials

"It's too short," sighed the lip-curled girl.
The 90s are back in style like an indifferent townie
drinking coffee with F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
Simmered in Apple spice
So clean and user friendly!

We're getting so much done here
Between status updates
Beneath the rotting weight of worry
Above the line of poverty
Beside our pretty peers

Unblinking into the steady light
With polka dotted foci
We strive
Create
And waste a lot of time

It's a lie to say it's all we know
But how could we go back
Newspapers, dictionaries
Body piercings, Game Boys
They're just so over now

The poster kids of pragmatizz
So quick to cast aside
Frivolity for economy
We've whittled away the things we call worthless
And could never survive in the wild

Unflinching, no doubt
No philosophy required
We've arrived here for the better
And we deserve it all

Megatherium and Anniversary Thoughts

Well, today marks a year since I started this blog and, as with most anniversaries, I have mixed feelings about it. What have I achieved? What purpose does it serve?

I do not consider myself a great writer and I am pretty lazy with forms. I mainly write to entertain myself and to extract ideas from my head in a slightly more elegant manner than "You know, like, it's so crazy, like, when you have a dream that's like, surreal, and you're like, on the moon and then, I dunno, you're like going crazy and..." Because that's how plenty of these ideas begin. I suppose it helps me understand some of my own thoughts and explore points of view that are different from my own. So, yes, I am achieving something by writing these poems. But am I achieving anything by sharing them? Let's explore this.

I have always felt a strong hesitation to share art of any kind, but poetry especially, and I believe it stems from a fear of being misunderstood. I hate it. I try to understand people and I want people to understand me, but, of course, being misunderstood is inevitable. I vacillate between honestly not giving a shit what people think about me and desiring to uphold an unattainable, perfect, lovable image. The result is a lot of "Hey, looky what I can do!" followed by "Oh, maybe I should have kept that to myself." It's as if there are two opposing voices inside my head: One is a rambunctious child who knows no boundaries and is eager to share anything and everything with the world and the other is a strict parent that tells the child to shut up and stop embarrassing everyone. If I had to side with one or the other, it would have to be the child. But, thanks to socialization, the parent's voice is still there and is not going away. My only choice is not to obey it.

Back to the question: Am I achieving anything by sharing these poems? I have heard often that if something makes you fearful, going toward it can help you overcome it. Putting these words out there for the world to see is certainly frightening but hey, a year has gone by and the world has not come crashing down yet. I just don't see the point in writing these things and keeping them a secret to take to the grave. I think that gives them weight they don't deserve. They are just words.  I conclude, therefore, that this blog is helping me slowly overcome my paralyzing fear of being seen as a sick, twisted, horrible, demented, disgusting person incapable of being loved or understood by anyone but Satan.

Now here's a poem about an extinct mammal.

Megatherium
Was the sky blue
The day you died
With a roar and tumble down?
Off your tail,
not teetering, no,
but hoisted high above the trees;
No enemy known
And no fear inside
You raked in your rightful bounty
Lush and untainted
By the greed of my kind,
Slow as a six-ton sunrise.
Slothful giant,
Did you die in vain
Ten brief millennia ago
To end up now
Museum entombed
Quiet, immobile, vulnerable
Much like before
When bushes whispered
And made unexpected enemies?
Planet earth
Could not contain you
And evolution was unkind.
Ambushed by spears
And the cruelty of time,
Only bones you left behind.