Horizon Identity

My horizon identity

never moves or sleeps,

but lies in the flickering bud

of your opera;

such tranquilizing

generosity.

You don't quite know

just where the sun rises,

or what my window ajar

is trying to whisper,

which only goes to show

That I am more transparent

than even a dying star,

hanging in the flickering sky

of your melody;

Pacific Lullaby

reminiscent.

Blood from the Mouth

Your questions make me laugh
Through the vomit of my discontent—
You've left me with
Nothing else to do

You're not the only one
With questions you'll never forget,
But you don't see me asking them,
Do you?

I don't need your vain advice
To jump on the boat that's sinking—
I've put up with more than

You could ever dream of

And I'm not sure if it's your mind
Or just your body that's thinking—
Either way,
It ought to be true love

I recall when she wore your coat
In the middle of sunny Spring—
I was sure that you two
Were only just kidding

Now show her just how much you care
And buy her a serpent ring—
I think that would be so
Much more fitting

I'm sure that you're warm tonight
In the prison of her embrace—
Can't you see that all I want is
For you to learn?

I feel tempted to warn you
About all the pain you'll embrace,
But you're not even worth
My fake concern

I wish we'd argue more often
For the affection of our friends,
But you know as well as me
I'd be the one winning

And if we keep on arguing
Until this hurricane ends,
I'll make sure that you're
The one left spinning

So if you think forgiveness
Lies ahead at my arm's length,
Her kiss must have already
Driven you insane

An' I know you think forgiveness
Means that I have strength,
But as a free man, let me tell you,
They aren't one in the same

Ways To Be For The Foolish, The Beautiful, The Tired

Be breathless at dawn.

Be stupefied, tripping over the day's cords.

Be turquoise, suck the color from the night.
Be the fantasies that you color in.

Be the monarchy, choose your Kings and Queens.
Be the Jack, don't stay for long.

Be red, don't be a geyser.
Be globs of mercury, rising in the new season.

Be careless with double-magnet hearts.
Be mindful of June bugs on the windshield.

Be green, the way only paper burns.
Be saved from the blizzard of thorns.

Be something, anything apparent.
Be the lighthouse that never fogs.

Be neither what you will nor were,
Be my breath of new,
Be my breath of dawn.

I have not met the High Noon Sun

When the summer breeze
pushes the pacific seas
across the thirsty states,
I feel I am not alone.

If the morning grass dew
ever turns our quilts blue,
while we shiver under the stars,
I would not be so far from home.

But when the starlight storm
fails to deliver this forlorn
boy from the pull of you,
I fear that it's summer,
and summer has
the thickest groan.

In the Loud Country

"Do you think we could catch our breath?" asked the piccolo to the bass,

"I just have this condition, I need a little space;

All the stars, they surround us now – see how they shine,

I'll bet if we stayed like this, one day they'll be mine."

"I didn't know any better," the bass he whispered kind,

"I'm not used to these hands, it's like some other mind;

But this is what I wanted, to be among the lucky few,

Who know what it means to listen to you."

Up high in the balcony, two harmonies did play,

nobody got too excited then, nobody flew away.

Elsewhere in the loud country, there flew a silver dove,

who crossed rivers and canyons at the speed of love.

You Before

I
There isn’t much in my numb resolve
That I fail to think of; who I fail to see
Through the yellow still walls of
Wall Street, Floor Four.
And through the door without a wreath,
Past hardwood floors that stretch to the
Granite tiles,
Granite ceiling and soul!
The kitchen spotless from the time
We once spindled here before.
And into some familiar room….

Where through fuzzy unblinking eyes
You watched me squirm, revealing
My dreams of you scorned.
Now I sit, without your traffic signal
Eyes to assess my (most) difficult choices.
The walls are more yellow than they were before.
And the air seems thicker, almost heavier by choice,
While all my choices weigh thicker than smoke.
How dark to not see you
From the darkest window, tonight,
Nor in the patterns of where we sat before.


II
Strange that I now address you.
Even when you’ve nothing left to feed
An emaciated, lactose soul.
Where else is one left to go,
stranded on this side of Jackson Street,
When he is devoid of God and Spirit…
But have I no book?
You would Think,
But I’ve given up on the Know.
Since I used to Think
(That I Know).
That was then; This is tonight,
Where in silence you shine
Brighter than the world who has
Softened dimmer than
The yellow aging light.

Strange that I now sing of you.
I would do too much to bring you
From hells into the whisper shells:
If truly you are kept hidden
in the page of the yellow wall,
(Which pains me, as much, to think)
Then stay away from the fringes,
They make willows out of leaves,
And become my beautiful sister;
And be rid of trespassing brothers
with your flowing voice
like mercury bells.


III
Strange that I still revere you,
While the city lights yearn
To reach inside the granite hold;
There are just too many worms
In the dirt of my soul.
And if this month runs drier
Than the nights have worn thin,
Then perhaps I won’t get to dream again.
Or, if the flickering sky fits the mould,
Perhaps I'll dream from before.
I hope, cleanest and most edged hope,
That I never feel to return back
To who I once revered before.
I am writing on the yellow walls again,
Yet this time not ashamed!
To paint this dream on the door.
And still, I hide behind my body of old.
So much more clever
And alone
Than before.

Yet when God finally wakes me,
I’ll stir from where we play all the more—
In the glorious folds of you before.

My Father Came To Me In The Fire

I stepped out tonight onto yesterday’s ground
With crepuscule eyes, two globes in the rough.
There was neither wind, nor ocean enough
To weaken the flicker of my navy flame.
I could not believe that once here did resound
The roars of the pride and my friends abound.

I stood long forgotten, like a small child’s game,
Until the moon peeked up, her hollow eyes lit.
Then watched as I spit into a makeshift pit:
A single drop, a combustion, a spark of blood.
The moon dove again, and who else could I blame
But myself, this son—what’s his name.

The flames danced coolly, as I knew they would.
Then through the bitter haze, my Father appeared,
His cigarette casting shade on his spectral beard.
He said not a word, but smelled strongly of the bay.
It drifted beyond Now, into the distant wood—
While my Father, just as Then, left me where I stood.

I had not remembered it was Father’s Day.
In the dance of the blaze I had not glanced
At the stars, no, this son was far too entranced
With the shadows curving on evening’s floor.
I doubt this son would’ve had much to say.
Not without a séance of Hallelujah May.

My Father must have wandered back to the shore,
Having done all he could to let his son
Know that he will never be the only one.
Watching the moon reappear, I can hear the sound
Of a lonely bell collar from the dog next door,
Whose owner died of a heart attack long ago.

When I got the Medical Bill today, I Felt like Everyone had already seen it

There was a rape this week in my dim room.
I'm afraid it's nothing but a bloody tomb,
but the mystery of it all has come to bloom.

I had heard before of werewolf lovers,
but never thought before to look under my covers.
In that day, the seeds were planted only in others.

I wish for one free day, I'd be allowed
to fly... and drop on her parade a mushroom cloud
of Forever that would blind the horny crowd.

Her blue-eyed jester, a ridiculous diplomatic,
is unworthy of even a love-lusting lunatic.
Never have I met a successor more pathetic,

since he seems to think we are on solid ground.
Nose-splitting anger would have been abound,
if I had only been given time to turn around.

They couldn't even fuck me from the front.
The irony of it all is as blunt
as the cry of the lamb in the still night hunt.

The Jailor

I
Tonight I have met the Jailor,
Who flips his hair like his bronze keys,
Jingling to signal the early morning
Which spits into the oil blue seas;
On his finger he wears a loose ring.
His cell is made of condom-thin sticks
Bought cheap at the local gas station.
The sidewalk is an elegant vacation
For the Jailor who I sought out
To get my human fix.

Bronze keys rattle and talk
In the violet shadow of a former man,
Who escaped from The Rock,
And with no conscience ran.
But now squashed under
The boot of someone former,
The Jailor coughs up aqua blood,
Which runs down cool and sly
Through the vein of the June sky.
Only now do I notice his tongue
Rolled in berry-thorns and mud.
Only now could I Know
That he was once an egg, in utero…

Did I notice the storybooks on the wall?
Did I notice the giggling far out in the hall?
I am tempted to say a prayer
(Using the Jailor’s Book, of course)
That would keep propped up the tired
Children of yesterday’s embrace,
And would scissor the tongues
Of the cold-blooded and desired.
But my strong hand is weak,
And my weak covers my pale face.
I shall let love take its course.

II
From what cloud was born my only friend?
The Heavens separate the ill from the well,
And as unfit as this homely hostel
Is deemed for the fit, I have made room
On the bamboo floor (though I am still).
On the dime-watch of the murky moon,
You from the farthest cloud did descend.
The Heavens separate the loved from the lost.
I think we are not yet
For the angels to accost.

And if it weren’t for these oil spills
Of unfit passion deemed too large to contain,
Then maybe we could choose.
If it weren’t for the vile midnight waves,
Pushing up against my chalky door,
Reviving my linen cadavers bruised,
I would recite aloud
All the expired names.
I would be allowed
To pour sand onto the games.
I would soon disavow
All the storybooks I noticed before.

The Jailor, then, would watch us go
Sashaying down docks at dusk,
A mere suicide’s jump from The Rock!
(In case he wishes to know.)
Yes, and wouldn’t he revel
At the sight of us locked on the hill;
Would his nerves then be as solid
As the compass lodged between his bars?
His brow would thin dry as his azure lips.
And wouldn’t he revel!
At passing his own moral bill,
Which he wrote with the blood from my scars:
Kiss, Don’t Tell.

III
There’s a linen-wrapped lady missing
From this storybook tale worth ignoring.
Some nights, I still taste the mourning.
I ask now, as her most beloved knave,
If she could close her eyes to forgiveness:
It’s not that I am afraid of the bolts
That spark from her human crave,
But I seem to have choked on her ring.
Most of all, I am tired beyond sorry,
And sick beyond all of “Weather Permitting”.
It was she that had the gall
To make the untimely call
That turned my affection ocher.
So that is why she is missing:
The Departed lies in an oil tanker.
Not a kiss at all.

IV
Here we are then,
I thank you for the call.
Let us sashay down the midnight dock,
While the Jailor stands alone on The Rock,
Watching us make friends with the tides
And pity the reflective fish who once flew
But now only sputter, and float.
We would hold hands in the moonlight,
And after licking the sugar off our shells,
Steal onto a languid, ebony boat.
And then the rain would begin to fall.
I’d give you my painted coat—
Tell of the monster I met tonight.
Tell of the horror of it all.

That would be the only dream worthwhile.
Even if it would serve to twist my cause,
I accept my flaws – under the June Moon,
We’ve talked.
But the border is fixed, I know I am locked.
They say when a rabbit is caught in the jaws
It bleeds until it sleeps—
Well, I can’t believe.
I have never seen the dead so close to the stars.
In truth, I am sickly shocked.
I have never seen the dead locked behind bars.
I wish I had strength to stand alone a while.
Then I would give the dream reprieve
And make this nightmare worth the while.

V
The Jailor now lies with his brooding look.
His eyes, fixed on an un-budging gate,
Beg for his freedom on a stage,
Sorry for inducing such a violet rage.
Maybe the next one will listen.
For now it’s too late—
Someone took
The keys that unlock the cage
Where someone former
Steadily
Wraps him
In linen.

the three ribbons i award

i would say fuck you,

but friends don't say fuck you

i would say i knew it all along,

but friends don't tell the truth

i would say kiss me,

but friends don't kiss each other

It All Felt So Right

My eyes must have a certain kind of cancer

from squinting into the inter-light.

As my silver lamp droops, the bulb resists

and shines on a dream I had last night.

I saw the handsome lot of them,

all jealous and foolish and bright.

None took my pleasure, I kept it well hid,

buried underneath platonic blight.

Then a baby came 'round, we took her in,

for fear of her heart getting frostbite.

She grew fond of me, as I wept on her head;

never again would the world be such a fright.

One of ours, she's turned out to be

the most beautiful girl of the serenade night.

Now she's inches away, brushing her hair.

Does she know?

I think she might.

Grad Parties #1 & 27

"When did our world get so old?"

I thought while some friend from childhood,

though not mine, breathed down my nape.

Smacking loudly on mashed potatoes,

Smacking loudly while I planned my escape.

I patiently gazed from my docile corner,

overlooking a courtyard of younger you's:

a mysteriously prolific conejo.

Funny how straight your teeth seem now,

Funny how it is you I came to Know.

Warm lactose breath irrigating my flesh, now,

my god how I hate people who think they Know

you – mind if I lay here once more?

I'll assume you left this light on purposefully,

I'll assume this was all you had hoped for.

And now time for my own graduation:

From my comatose, love-worn isolation.

Summer Staircase

I sense your lonesome body tonight,

lying with dead eyes melted blue.

Are you missing someone, too?

When you lose someone precious

to the rolling calibre of sea,

do you lose words just like me?

Have you counted chess board squares (64),

listened to the empty fridge echo,

followed which way the fan blows?

If the putty day has quickly cooled

and your tough hour's long expired,

why kill the part of you that's tired?

Is it the rickety ivory staircase

that unwinds and coils you awake,

or simply a photocopy mistake?

The stair leads nowhere, friend,

to some Then I hope you ever know.

Can you hear me climb it slow?

The night is cool, and might we be,

but there's no sense in being modest:

Blue fire burns the hottest.

Sleeping in the Rainforest

Now that Junior year has ended – a fantastical ending with all the fiery hope that this wonderful May has distilled in me – I am free.
I am free – to look through the year's particularly traumatic flipbook, seeing in quick succession my:

Heavy September. Ignorant October. Bittersweet November. Newfound December. Blissful January. Fighting February. Dead March. Dreary April. Lovely May.

and what has proven so far to be a Reborn June.

I am free – to lie in my bed for hours and watch my near-future film flash across my ceiling, with eyes hungry for something easy to look at and something even easier to take care of.
Yes, I am free – in a sense, from who I once had to be in the shadow of painstaking, stressful arrangements made without the knowledge that flowers always die at some point.
I am free – to write whatever I want, and I won’t forget it.
I am free – free – free – to get close! to parts of the rainforest I’ve only seen before, but never treaded barefoot, digging my toes into the soppy dirt.

...after all this time, I imagined freedom tasting more like a peppermint tea, one that strips my tongue of all its bumps and breaks away the cloud of metaphors and imagery circling my brain.
But today, yesterday, this May, this Summer
tastes ubiquitously sweet,
solidifying a film of syrup

around my worn-out, onion skeleton.
Maybe I was wrong about freedom.
But in all likelihood, I am wrong about everything,
everything and anything that carries the scent of you.

To be completely (almost) honest at this point,
in the midst of a garden blooming
Ripe Rights

&
Yellow Yes’s

&
Sugary Soons,
I can’t figure what’s Wrong.
What is wrong with me, to hunch my shoulders looking backwards.
Or, what is wrong with the blankets,
that they have to be so small as to not encompass both our shivering bodies.

(So, I scribble secrets about you in my sleep,
since I (like you) am a tremendously light sleeper.
But secrets jam in my ears and nostrils ever still!
It is a gamble to write to you – no, to post, for you –
because our ignorance keeps my flame from being doused.
This I hope you understand, since the Summer depends on it, after all…)

Here is one such Secret:
It is harder to sleep next to you than to sleep at the mouth of a waterfall; my heart beats harder than the sound of glaciers colliding;
sleeping next to you…
is sleeping on the floor of a rainforest;
with strange foreign sounds all around, and it could rain at any moment,
and my life would just change right there.
I have never had a troubled sleep as wonderful as that.
I woke up feeling the youngest I’ve felt in the past year,
because the selfless sweetness that once defined me
had taken over once again, even if for only one light-blinding night,
where everyone was beautiful and no one hurt.
My old self was back, ready to give my all for nothing in return.

Nothing for flowers that pale to your summer-set eyes,
nothing for giving you my coat in the gentle rain,
nothing for holding on to your finger to keep from getting lost in a sea of sweat,
nothing for pulling couches together to form a bed so that you could sleep before all others,
nothing for turning off the light for you, so you don’t have to stumble through dark, dry rooms just to find your pillow,
nothing for leaving the warmth of the bed to get you water for your magical throat,
nothing for leaning close into you to whisper that you were, without a moment’s hesitation in my naturally hesitant mind, the most beautiful girl that beauty-blinding night.

Nothing: except that you saved that night for me,

and my May, and already my Summer.

Yes, you are my Butterfly of the Now,
gently warming the frost of the Past,
by always fluttering here: Now.
I owe so much to this,
for making me young again;
my teeth once again glow;
the sparks of my night-fingers fly once more!
I only wish I could tell you everything:
about how I am saved,
about how I can make it up to you,
through lemon-water and slow, moonlit dances
and falling asleep together on the rainforest floor.

The dry, grey dirt will once again turn the color of midnight
as we lie with our mouths open, catching the Summer rain,
with my hand tangled up in yours; I would give you
everything you never needed,
but what in gentle sleep you might one day see:
this youthful, soaked Summer love.

scribbled secrets (put these flowers in your hair!)

I see my jigsaw love in your misty eye,

twice assembled, twice destroyed.

But we'll climb into the heart of the sky,

and escape all we spoke of just now.

With your name flaring on my door,

you've snuck into my room, my walls.

So I snuggle up next to it on the floor,

since I'm trapped here in the just-now.

No one will hear the magenta streaks of night

that soon follow us like ribbon mercury.

Not until I learn how to stand upright,

and own my life for just now.

With flowers in my hand, I'm left in suspense,

but I have one last secret to unveil:

These aren't secrets in the slightest sense,

they're only wonders I felt just now.