i'm still an animal

as much as i try to seem

calm and domesticated,

like an old dog in suburbia,

i am yet a beast:

my fangs drip with whiskey

and my eyes shine in the night

like a vulture or a fox, but less beautiful.

so distant, horizon lines and fish eye lenses,

like the past, or some naval armada,

pummeled by your locks,

driven to the bottom of the ocean by

your treacherous hazel eyes.

fair well, or better than i,

for your happiness is its own reward

and your smile is the universe.

once we sat, delirious,

smoking cigarettes in the misty sunrise,

talking shit about people we didn't know,

asking questions, unanswerable,

all the while, your smile bearing down on my soul,

and mine, paling in comparison,

searing itself into the insides of your eyelids.

i am the way your cheeks flush whenever you see me,

and you are the sweat on my brow as your smile,

refracted on a million rays of light,

reaches roughly into my brain and extracts

every single bit of sanity, so tenderly.

i want the title to be "purposefully vague"

to arm or to disarm,
a problem of violence,
i am a prisoner to perception,
and your eyes are the bars of my cell.
in the darkest of nights,
my face is but a mirror,
giving everything away,
showing you my ace, and more disastrously,
my heart in all its grand debility.

be still, i know you,
frantic though your body may seem,
tranquil is your soul and, Baby,
calm as a guru is your gaze.
i used to know what life was about,
which Girls to take, which Drugs to avoid,
and it seems as though our pattern is coalescing,
into some infinite series of gasps and pauses,
no substance, just some shadow of truth,
anything else,
a caricature of intimacy,
a puppet-show lust,
wrapped in a blanket of tears,
awaiting a latent transformation
which will forever wait in the wings.

warm, i will keep you, Baby,
as we wait forever,
if only your weathered hands would feel my face,
as if i meant something,
and if only my heart, solemn as a stoic monk,
would leap from its cradle,
crying all the way down an abyss
of ecstatic joy,
our unfaithful lips fused at the edges.
God's unholy vengeance,
is apathy in response.

and/or

and so it seems that life and death
are just some pleasant accidents
between which we sit here, struggling
with whats, hows, whos, and whys;
but why do we care? and why should we?

and, by the way, who are we? and who is you?
questions, billions of them, unanswerable,
crawling almost ceaselessly,
down magical filaments of endless light,
towards a nonexistent finish line.

you'll never make it where you're going,
and not from lack of trying or some
deficiency of moral fiber:
it's just that that finish line, and all its glory,
is nothing but another beginning.

tired, weary, stumbling slowly,
our heart does something new,
having spent so long beating,
like some tribal ritual gone awry in your chest,
now rests forever in this world.

cross over, into the other,
the dark, the unknown, the nothing.
nothing is everything, just as ending is,
ending is, ending is, repetition,
full stop, and breathe.

and so it seems you are no more,
a pleasant detour life turned out to be,
and now, you sleep, or dream
of grass growing to the heavens,
or maybe a field flowering, just once, forever.

from elba

what am i to say?
when your tears are his,
his dreams are dark,
and i am, here, exiled.

the songbird tells of strife,
but sweet harmonies through the bars,
entrance the ear and heart,
almost forgotten now, the woe.

the stars, of course, point backwards,
sacrificing holy rules and codes
merely to get their fix,
before returning to their stations.

sit. silent. feel it. definitely.
i can tell there's something missing,
but as for what? what matters?
and as for how? why bother?

drift, eternal drift, so cruel,
that drags you from the top,
and gags and binds you with every word,
how empowered he must feel.

still, no way out,
but the slow, benign hand,
ticking lonely seconds,
sinister, and dripping with time.

lucid

devouring, always,
thirsting for words,
jonesing for dramatics,
yearning for redemption.

the keyboard pounds,
some inglorious Beethoven
composing some dilapidated
Archduke Trio, just for the hipsters

the action repeats. now. now again.
in spite of its supposed purpose
a mere reflex?
or the essence of self.

more more more, i say
why should not the skies erupt
with rivers of euphoria
and other useless miracles?

the city, overrun with ugly serpents, makes
the whole gambit crystalline:
permanent, frozen, and most of all,
clear, as a may afternoon, laid out on the Front Lawn.


so, always, never does it come.
the chalice spills forever,
and i must lap it off the dirty floor,
because why cry over spilt milk?

nothing grieves me heartily indeed
but that i cannot do much at all,
that i can do everything and don't,
that i need everything evil and beautiful.

ether

the seconds chisel the ice;
the thaw, it has begun.
as old woes come to die,
new paths are clear in view,
if distant and unwanted.

return to past hallucinations,
don't trust your withering eye,
and always have in mind
the sad contempt you held
for him. (but who am i?)

old world across the ocean,
torment me with vivid lies.
i ask for salvation
and all i get is you,
ether, slipping between my trembling fingers.

she had an accident
but all i can do is drink,
until the scars and bruises
dissolve and melt into
the atlantic, or at least the bath water.

i read because i must,
and listen to the beats
that others love to death
but i just want
to get laid (but what do i know?)

i fear that god has made me so
no living soul will comprehend
that i don't mean harm
when i do the things
that hurt the most.

dread and happiness comingle,
like awkward exes at a party,
their hands touch at the punch bowl,
but they were never really
in love to start.

this love is

the path of wisdom dwells beneath
the open sewers of the street
and far above the ancient pylons
of a lonely gravity.

the sea of roses flows between
an old forgotten shattered dream
and young, immortal gods of new,
creating truth, or so it seems.

the strings that bind us to this place;
they are the same that make her face,
the beauty and the horror, truth,
beseech the strings to truth, erase.

this parade of fiction shall cease
only when the gods, with ease,
decide to shatter dreams once more:
how beautifully impossible this love is.