in bloom

forth, from under muddy, dead ground

comes life, breathing, new

life into rhythm and

desecrating this world's

holy rite of death

so many greens

like so many shades of west,

of youth, of birth and

rebirth forever

until it never stops

gushes, from above the blanket of the sky,

entrancing all the little things,

all the nuance and forgetting

what it is to be alive

yet living, breathing, muddy

fading are those shades of love,

the hues of her, the tone of one

blurred night among the rest:

sins forgotten, words seared

into stone tablets, scorched, bleeding

beating, waiting, heart

sun rays and ocean waves

waiting, for the frost to melt

her arms snake down like rivers,

floods of life and death

her face is fading, muddy,

blurred like sins remembered,

words said; and new little things,

joyous, clever little things

with a face like all the greens of spring

olympus

if this is the first day of my life,
let the doctor off the hook,
for he knew not what he did,
never mind the man and wife.
if tonight's the last night,
let us drink until your face,
red with blood and white with grace,
is upon my righteous lips;
all the lies that i've told
wiped out by all the ones you've sung.

let's go for a drive;
i'm sure it will end in tears.
these things always do until they don't.
the gods, they always flee;
unfold the drive;
escape alive;
put me out of my misery.
and melodies of far away
appear to you in better shape
when all there really is
is here and there with different apes.

your soul, like some gem with no color,
radiates a tearful nature, full of beauty,
bittersweet green, o lush Gaia before us;
tremble as her hands touch skin,
retreat into the music still...

once, the waves moved us so far
we knew not who we were;
if only for a lion's heart,
my lips might have to burn
and yearn forever in the dark,
across the mountain, plain and stark,
with love and grace lost from the start,
the need and thirst remain.

the fault is mine for leaving, believing
the fault is yours for living, as if
the ones who love you the most are
far too precious to love in return;
better, then, to love those sculptures,
beautiful and cold,
infused with souls,
and just as soon vacated,
leaving you alone and wasted.

rest easy, Athena, because instead
of the wrathful vengeance, all i have
is more of the same:
more longing looks and sighed goodbyes,
more merciful than your whole body,
clothed in Elysium's finest,
flowing in the scorching winds of the sound,
so sweet and all too perfect to admire,
until the temples crumble and decay,
until our woven bodies are cast into Hades,
until this feeling...

summery/summary

o monotony,
her hideous face allures me
so much that i might leap into the abyss,
a mediocre fall, in truth,
onto a springboard for disaster...
and not for want of false trying.

i watched a movie today that made me cry.
i can't remember the last time i cried in front of anyone.
i looked over at my mom's tear-soaked face and as
she looked back at mine,
she did not see me.
because i don't cry; right?
i'm sure she cried some more just at the sight of me.

i've gone and done it now.
exiled myself from the one thing i want,
the one thing i crave:

the one thing i need,
or else i'll wither, for a little while.
like a tomato plant that's been out
in the muggy alabama summertime;
like i forgot to water her for just a few days;
like the leaves are wilting brown, and gray, and i think:
i can save her.

and i water her day after day;
and i sometimes think i'll drown her
the way i drench her stalk.
and her roots.
and her leaves;
like i want her to live so i can live
and through her love to live instead
of living to love her.
and i have to wait and see if she'll pull through
and save me in return.

and at the end of this day,
of whatever kind it was,
i sang some songs of old,
and smoked until the ash
and dreams
were too soaked into my clothes
for my tear-soaked mother
not to notice.

the sunsets tick like a time bomb to redemption,
the seconds, like so much sweat,
mere atomisms,
symbols of this world's inconceivables,
indecipherable nothings,
whizzing 'round your halo;
rushing to drip down your fading silhouette
before it's shattered by einstein himself.

still remember

still:

remember that it's all a game

and when your heart shouts wealth or fame,

remember that it's all the same,

remember we have much to gain,

and nothing to lose but hope.

still:

remember the way she looked,

and the way her throat strained at the hook,

remember it's your heart she took,

remember you're an open book

and your pages won't last forever.

still:

remember the shape of punk to come,

and how you used to be so dumb,

remember when she pulled the gun,

remember watching black ink run,

and the stains on your fingers forever.

still:

remember that he died for you,

and the years spent trying to pay that due,

remember that your human, too,

remember language is so crude

and the world is so...

still.

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.