notes to myself

The rolling black foam
muffles the clapping icicles
hanging from the lips of the deceased.
The starlight funnels into the churn
turning the cliff walls incandescent.
This begins the holy vacuum,
the descent of the sea-salt song.
It expands like a horn bringing dawn,
seeping into the cracks and folds
of the rolling black curtain
enfolding the dark and darker coast.
That was where I felt the foam at first.

--

I miss my girl.
She was more than good to me.
She saw the cracks and stuffed
them with glitter and glue.
I don't know what to do.
It's all I can do to stop
breaking. Shatter
me and let grains of sand
roll like a wave of sadness.
I can't handle the custom-built harness.
I'm slipping straight out
because my weight is slipping.
The cold weather is holding me.

--

It all faces upward.
The stalks in their upward growth,
the yarn unspooled journeys north,
the eyes of hope cast toward the north,
the spikes of sorrow impale me on high,
the broken ice and wind is taken
to the ballet of north-wind heartbreak,
it all climbs that upward fervent slope,
and nothing is worth climbing back down
for a mouthful of dew
that turns your teeth into violent craters.
Hard work gives a snow-capped wing
to those staring at all the grey up there.
So much grey up there.

--

The darkness encroaches also.
Hanging on to a frayed rope,
dangling from the hope of an escape
into a dark humid tunnel full of
light and stars and sailing mercury
nothing short of anarchy of the soul
leaves the wounded heart yearning
for infinite cold searching for
an angel of gold
Providence extending warmth
to the border
bringing us over to sea-pastures
of dealing with it.
Of living for sake of life
and giving for sake of strife
in the twilight of love and loving,
aye, I cannot be stopped from moving
towards the sad unanswerable mystery
that locks the misery in completely.

I wish I had the good sense
to fear death and all its hammers
hammering upon my soul
and beating bloody the flesh
of the fatigued
I could guess at the sense of upward
if gazing downward
did not produce a sensation of
sleeping.
All I see are specks on the floor.
And all doors are useless to me.
If only we could be free
from the terror of living for sake of dying life
Constant dying lying life.

-

When I woke
my hangover spoke.
It's time to make coffee,
do the laundry,
align the letters.
In the throb
of those first few minutes,
I could not think of anything
worth saying to myself
except that
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

--

it is clear to me what you may or may not have done

it is clear to me what you may or may not have done
i'm a wide receiver
you can't get shit past me
trying is crying
aren't you tired of crying
isn't it messing up everything
i can picture life outside
i have a feeling it's happening
mostly to you
the way you always wanted it
the way you begged to see
another shelf of books
we couldn't afford
the rustle of swan's wings
all of everything out there

i'm on the fence
singing like dylan's bird
but not just for you
i'm sending out a warning
to the legions of shits
who will wipe their conscience
all over your face
anything to replace this
confusion yeah?
it is clear to me

what you may or may not
be keeping beneath the folds
whichever river leads the
better direction
build your raft
but fire is your only craft
you burn everything good
you put it out with your
guilt
flutter on with your life
i think i can bear it

it is a serious game

i should not have
hassled you

i should have let you be

i shouldnt have pressured
your pressure points
into folding into
a pyramid of constructs
and constructive criticisms
concerning your unsober
plays and unplays
it was not your fault

you did not need to do anything
for us to fail

it was in the cards
for us to fail

there is not much more to say

i am sorry
that i decided
it was your decision
or lack of decision
that our success
depended on

rather it was the cohesiveness
of our coo-operation
that cemented the sad fate
of our blue-light exercise

my most important hope
is that this insignificant loss
does not alter our patterns
or hunger to better ourselves
i pray
we do not lose this
brotherly drive

yes you are my brother
get used to it
i get mad at you for stupid things
surely you will sleep it off
and continue adjusting yourself
to the present,
the gift of the next game,
the cove of the victory
and the nexus of the
untimely bloom.

psycho

it looks awful nice out there
that out there
that i am waiting for

i'll bet the pavement is warm
and that through those doors
wait people i know

i wake up in a sad fever
and stumble
to check the mail

anxiety enbalms me
and there is no switch
to calm the buzzing

despair numbs me
only temporarily
before i wash out

the bright memory
of being hungry
for the life

i thought i'd lead
now all that has
sunk like lead

to the depths
of my curled-up
vessel

bobbing along
the sea-salt
throng of flesh

Failure Donor

Finally
there is a use
for my excuses.
I have come
to the voting booth
carrying a pencil
itching
to write my name.

I have stood
on dissolving
milk crates,
preaching the
end of my time,
using my
wealth of knowledge
concerning myself
to pinpoint
my familiar demise.

The fishbowl
is full of chairs.
I have sat in mine.
I have flushed
the system free
of error and toll.
I have filled
the fishbowl
with drugs
and dirty water,
I am a warm host,
I invite all the parasites
to come and play.

I watch as it empties
into a basin
laid at my feet.

What's next is what's left.
Struggle succumbs to sweat.
Nothing I do helps
so I am passing it on,
paying it forward,
until this fishbowl
is clear and bereft.

Stay Asleep

I'll be sure not to bother you here.
I've been careful
so as not to let the moths and
winged phantoms through.
I hope I don't wake you,
warm like the sun
and breathing so soft.

Nobody knows
that I have slipped in.
I carry no letter
but the words stamped
into the veins
of my wrist, frozen
out of fear.

My disposition
is at an utter standstill.
I would kill
for a guaranteed
psychic reading.
I need to know where I stand.

Lucky for me I know a guy.
He's got a sense of humor,
always teasing me in dreams
of torture tongue
and sauna situations.
We talk in morse code,
through the blips and bleeps
we send each other in sleep.

Sorry to bore you
with the realities of
being an abnormality.
I have strapped myself
to the shelf long past
my expiration date.
I am owed a renewal.
I guess that is my reason
for wanting to see you.

I want so badly
for nothing to happen,
for everything to stop
happening at once.

Frowning Moon

The grass is a bunch of shit,
lit up by baseball field
lights and moon beams.
I have trampled it
with the erosion
of my routine.
It is a broken palace.
It is the place where
sparks are silenced
and diminished
to a dust by
the virulent foot
of my anger.
I cannot control
the way that I
feel now
or the way
that I have
ever felt.
I have
never felt
this way,
the way
that I conquer
even the grass,
so at once
sad
and bent
towards hell.

a good attempt

Little drops of condemnation
fall from the
lightning-storm cloud,

forming pools of
fingerprint sweat.

What am I doing?
Lying

baking in the
gaze of a
late summertime
storm.

Biased ambassadors
leave a crinkled note
on the doorstep,

asking us to
step it up,
to keep it down,
and to water
the plants nextdoor.

I have nothing
to contribute
except
a scrambled
figment

which lies above

Consider

For a moment,
forget your
first born son.
Then makeshift
a sack to load
up his shit,
so that he can
admire the
covers of
the books
he brought with.

No candles lit.
I lip-low real
soft because
if I were to
disturb the
cowlicked
stalks of the
black corn sea,
they would
rally the lightning
bugs to strike me.

I have many more failures
before I can come home.

Trunk of Veils

Lately I have not wept
for the usual things:
but for the cave
behind the waterfall,
the trunk of veils
behind the veil.

With the
smoothing-stone
of routine
I have glossed
myself over.

I weep
for the tunnel
laid in stone.
My sides
constantly scraping
as I near
the clearing.

To think
I had achieved wasting!
Look at me now, ma:
stranded sans passion,
poor, purposeless,
stuck in the wasteland.

Is it lazy
to blame the assembly
for failing to assemble?
It feels as if life
has ceased to give life.

It was not enough
to win a heart
and continue winning
in whatever manner
I knew how,
whatever back-handed
back-alley back-walled
way possible to me.
How did I become so
mathematical,
to think this all so linear?

Walking along the beach
with only my feet submerged
in the surf, I know myself best
and think to throw myself in.

Yet to keep the salt from my tongue
I continue walking, sometimes running,
always in the same direction,
and I wonder too often if my cowardice
stems solely from my inaction,
or the half-hearted manner in which
I only move towards what is in front
of me, half-ocean, half-sand,
stretching for seemingly a lifetime.