I wait.
For what, what slouching beast towards Bethlehem slinks?
The burning blue sky of winter on a hot empty day on the coast,
Its oppressive expansiveness pushes down on the homes, hearths, and houses.
Alternating from coffee, to beer, to scotch, to cigarettes, and back to coffee...
Recognition, connection, false hopes;
we don't believe in soulmates, and we wait for them, like Santa.
Just as real.
Dream jobs, lottery tickets, death;
and endless list of future pursuits: travel, money, love...
Always in the tomorrow that will come once the sky has been burnt and blackened by the day;
tomorrow will be better.
Different.
But there are no differences in days or months or people.
No tomorrow; no soulmate; no Santa.
Just seconds and minutes marching in an endless line;
carried for the first nine months in a darkened train
we arrive, stripped, assigned, pretending that Belzec is the Balkans.

An easy metaphor; in an apartment, the air a sultry sink, it would be shame if there was any to be had. If you could still feel shame.
But we are born into shame. The rank mix of sweat and drugs and depression and desperation and dreams. Dreams like so many empty condom wrappers scattered on the floor; multitudes, hidden in wastebaskets, under beds, tucked away at the last minute... the unborn future sitting next to us, rotting in a haze of spermicidal gel in a garbage can under that selfsame sun as us. Whose condom are we in? We, the slowly coagulating present?
Our only freedom comes in desolation of our dreams, in our sacrifice of ourselves beneath that empty sky. No trumpet's blow will pull the scales off your eyes. We are blinded by birth. We are Abraham and Issac on that hillside, and there is no god. Just the same empty dead blue sky, the color of a corpses lips, above.

It won't care.
Scream, cry, rage; it will remain. The sacrifice is one of perception, just like the jailhouse, the stoic argument of virtue; easy on the agropolis steps, different in the lion's den.
Because there is no virtue.
But there are lions.

Creation and destruction are fantasies. Action; political, social, economic... movement is no more an anwser than stillness as the slightest blink, like a butterflies wing; your truck breaks down two weeks later. Unrelated?

We surround ourselves with each our own fog, hoping that cruel light of the world outside will not penetrate. Substances, hopes, dreams, plans, a future. Tomorrow.
A haze we hide ourselves in, hiding ourselves from the world, the world from us...
but the day burns on.
Born into Borges lottery. A complexity we can't understand, an absurdity that extends beyond laughter. Fatalism, nihilism... we march in step, aware or not. Each pace bringing us closer and farther from the cataclysm of the duel of the present. Turn, and you find, through the fog, that you face yourself. Look closer, and you see the fog is you; you are nothing; you face nothing; there is nothing. Gasping and bleeding, a shot rings out; your gun, your life, cold and flaccid against your hip.

A woman dies in the throes of passion, her safe word left unspoken or unheard. A senator assassinated. A person explodes. 10,000 people a year die from earthquakes. Markets bull and boar and collapse and stagnate in loose 10 and 20 year cycles. A DUI checkpoint. A bottle of scotch. Organic salad covered in the later runoff of bacteria from a neighboring factory farm. Hospital bills piling up from falling down with no one around to sue. Bounced checks from work; accounting errors that your bank and bills don't understand or care about. Cancer. Heart disease. Stroke. High blood pressure; high BAC's; just being high; to drunk, to sober, to alive, too filled with words to take action. Too many actions taken without words. Too many empty words used to justify actions, too many words used for inaction.
Too many words.
Too many tomorrows.
Listen close enough, and through the fog, you can hear the unsteady march of multitudes...
empty echoes beneath the winter sun.

Expression depression;
Writing empty blind words
like lonely thoughts and feelings.

Like waiting inside a car with
no gas and a broken heater
on the side of a busy highway.

Like a full bowl from your favorite
box of cereal on a Sunday morning
and an empty bottle of milk.

Like singing your heart out
to an empty room on a sinking
ship with no life-raft.

Like a log sitting in a fireplace
with no kindling and a
busted chimney flue.

Like a fresh blank canvas
sitting next to a bottle of wine,
and no brushes.

Like holding a much needed
cigarette outside a bar
with no matches.

Like a perfectly brewed pot
of premium roasted coffee
and an empty box of sugar.

Like a long walk on a
cold windy night to the store
while your wallet sits at home.

Like two candles burning over
a freshly made five-course dinner when
your partner calls working late.

Like a poem sitting on a
forgotten page, waiting words,
unseen. Unsung. Unknown.

Like a person;
like a poem-
like me.

'Water, Water'

Unsatiated; squatting on a raft at sea,
squinted eyes searching the horizon
while the soft sound of the shifting sands
far below
echoes through the salt to surface.

Perforated thoughts torn and thrashing;
jerked from the dark cool depths;
lured by the frantic frenzy
of wriggling emotions; gorging on
the hook of desperation; choking
gasping grabbed by the filthy hands
of madness and stuffed bleeding-
beating-screaming
down the raw toothed maw of insanity.

Staring at myself muddled by
lapping waves; gently rocking
the unseen stillborn beast
that I catch in the depths
looking up
trapped, all one can do is wait.

Siren's discord, sweet and slow,
unceasing, unyielding, unrelenting-
a slip...
bubbles rise; looking up,
a figure, on a raft, a fading
silhouette against the twilit
surface...
...laughing...

Crying laying dieing
from the self-inflicted
serrated sides of pillow-talk
words whispered into
waiting ears.
Lying to the reflected
fragments of her
living in the space between
shattered facets and feelings
surrounded by what looks like
so many more sharp
wanting edges.

broken
heart-bone beating jaggedey raggedy pop-lockin' emotions in the
strobe-lit stop loss chamber of feeling staring at a shattered mirror
and dining on consignment memory's leftover freezer dinners while seated
at a table for one.

Addicted To Love

I've known for some time that I have a problem.

Maybe it was the string of jobs, one after another, that you got me fired from...

That was my first clue. But I reveled in you still. I mean, I didn't think it was a problem

as my life began to spin out of control...

You were always easy to justify. You were the one thing making my life better.

Despite the failed relationships, piling up,

like a car crash on the freeway in rush hour...

Sure, sometimes people made comments. But to me they just seemed jealous

of what we had. With you came a sense of power. Prestige.

By the time I realized what I had become. What we had done.

It was too late...

But I held on. Maybe because I couldn't let you go.

You've been a part of me, the best part, for so long.

You were electricity. Fire. A thousand supernovas

exploding, and we would rise and fly in the waves of cosmic radiation...

But it can never last. The fire would fade. The waves would crash.

And I would begin to sink, looking for you, reaching out, searching,

letting you pull me up. Even as you dragged me down.

It began so slow. So gradually. I don't know when I lost control.

When I became more you than me. You've changed my sense of time,

now measured by the regular highs and lows

that have no relations to clocks or calendars.

Only the desire, which takes over, without me even knowing...

Somewhere along the way the line between you and I,

between the individual and the act, the action, disappeared.

And now I can't even save myself. Us. You.

Because if I do, if I try, if I succeeded,

we'd both be dead.

I clenched you in my fist. Squeezing. And I feel heat. Like a spoon,

held over a flame. Red hot searing pain. But I let you

convince me... I convinced myself... you whispered, I listened

till my fingers fused around you. But the hunger didn't care.

I didn't care...

I see you now. I see exactly what you are. In every mirror,

waiting. Watching. Looking back.

I can't celebrate you anymore. I can't love you anymore.

I can't love myself anymore.

And I

can't

stop.

Shit:
Desire, distance, hurt, loss, love and loneliness; the foundation of a poor poet's garden

She left, and I'll never know why
thought I can count the reasons
on one hand.

She left, and every clock stopped,
though shadows grew and the day
marched on.

She left, and now two thousand eight
hundred miles and three time zones
separate our every word.

She left, and I can not seem
to forgive myself, or her,
for letting go.

She left, and though together,
we have never
been more alone.

Noon
I wish we were laying,
the the dappled light of noon
blowing lazy curtains in and out.
Gentle bellows languishing as
the yellow rays turn gold
and sparkle with dust.
Curled together, comfort, peace,
while the slow sound of our breaths
call and answer each other
in time with the steady pulse
of the breeze.
Beyond the steady ticking of time,
the clock is stopped
and all the world is here
in this moment, together.
Looking, seeing, knowing
you in the silence. My fingertips
follow the dance of light
and dark across you.
The soft rasp of my dry touch
on your sleeping skin, hands
dancing gently to their own music.

Phantasms
Imperfect desire, one
eyes expressive with tight, down-turned lips,
mascara thick and dark against her fair hair,
a quiet, cautious raccoon.
Another
thin, tone, full lips, empty eyes,
the bored sound of her chewing.
A crane flustered and gawky.
Another
tan, brown, like a wild
impatient hoarse. Breathtaking
in this moment.
Another
dark hair, smokey voice,
a raven, mysteries hidden in
the promises of her smirk and smile
while somewhere, below,
in a Chinese restaurant,
sits my love
alone.

Open
I dream
beyond my reach, lives, worlds,
my small impotent hands
are unable to grasp.
Weary of waking, of walking,
of wishing and wanting... always
always wanting
what I cannot, or am unable,
to hold.
A bird is circling in the sky,
calling for its lost mate.
It is the only sound
echoing long after
the rifles crack.
A speck fading up
into the encroaching night.
I know that bird,
though not which one
I am.

Topography
The soft bulge, gentle lines
of taut tan skin
descending, the whisper
of secrets murmuring
from the hang
of her black blouse
before
plunging, my gaze
to the jeans beneath
and the silent silky
triangle of folds
suggested, imagined, desired,
within.

Forgotten
I am helpless, undone,
tied up with all the
strings pulled out.
Soft cotton falling,
a shower, then
a trickle.
Like so many
rain-laden clouds.

Curse
I am in love
with love
and I am in love
with pain
because in
the long run
happiness and heartache
become the same.

 2 bad poems in an hour... yeah, class was that boring...

Withdrawal

Nicotine heroine withdrawals

with caffeine headaches 

and grass induced

paranoia

while on an LSD flashback

from peaking on shrooms.

Empty, cracks of desire 

racing in canyons of fire and ice

and sparks, across dehydrated skin.

Eye twitching finger

spasms head shakes shakes

shake angry electric ants 

dancing with daggers down 

every nerve.

Sweat and urine sick

soaked sheets in locked

boxed beaten broken bound

burning burning, oh

the burning pain

of minutes and

hours and

days and

nights and miles

and miles and miles

unchanging, an eternal

suffering

easier

     than being

without you.

Help

( I need a little)

I feel the distance

building between us

a change,

in the wind and the clouds,

Unseen but felt,

we don't know, 

when or how,

till its strikes 

out and flashes,

a bolt.

Igniting, it sizzles,

exploding, my world fills

with an arch of brilliant light

hide from the pressure

it builds

hide from the friction

and yield

as the sky tears us apart 

each nigh.

Took me for a ride, lied,

wounded all my pride,

without knowing or having a clue.

Now bleeding and broken

my heart is spoken for

by someone, I can't hold onto.

the pain and the distance,

love flows with resistance

now tell me what am I

to do?

So many fleeting thought go unposted...

Here are the few recent leaves that fell, rather than scattered to the moments without pen, without paper, without desire, or left to the carlessness of a man-boys charge...

Scotch

Flames lick and laugh
tickling with thick smoke
the belly and bowels
as slanting bars burn
casting colors of
gold and red warmth against
the room’s pale walls.

Lantern, furnace,
ruddy and rheumy,
bright blank eyes
stare off through
the dull gray fog of age
and ages, remembering
the ruins and barrooms
where once,
or never,
or always,
a lighter step had waltzed.

Desire, in 3 Movements, E Minor

I dream of you in the sacred space between twilights. Your smile haunts my nights and your absence is the stalking specter of my nightmares. I toss and turn, churning and twisting, the sheets, breathless and panting I silently cry out for you, as your unspoken name echoes deafly and I fall back into turbid slumber.

You, glowing, a woman, with power and presence in your every move and intonation. Innocence tempered by experience, your knowing eyes, brilliant insights exposed behind the flash of your smile, behind full lips smirking in perpetual bloom, ripe with humor dipped in tart ironic cynicism. To run my fingers through the ravens’ mane of hair, feel your hot pale skin in the cup of my palm, to let the tips of my fingers dance...

Forever. You. Days and weeks, terms, eventually leading to miles, and years, you, forever. Burned into my memory, now, into my heart, as the sacred, the holy, that my profane, in awe, could never approach.
Goodbye, and thank you, for the photo I never took, but will always, always keep.

"The is a large gate behind childhood that closes" -Civilization of Max Bright

Haunting words. Haunting music. Can I grow up? Can I become a man? Can I be the man that others deserve? That she deserves? I want too. I am not sure I know how. But I want that love. To share it, to be a part of it, as it overflows from any person or relationship or family or home and spreads out like a rising tide into the world. The peace that comes with compassion, with empathy, with no longer being... alone?

Can I pack up the toys of my childhood, its whims and flights, and put them away?

All things that we touch are a part of us, forever. Joys and sorrows both leave their scars.
Suffering is life, and desire. Desire is not love. I know desire, what I want to know is love.
All things happen for a reason. Even if that meaning is to nothing and no one but ourselves. An article, a movie, a song, a feeling, a moment... they layer together, creating and recreating us, as we are pulled and moved by the selves within us, reshaping what we are and what we will become.

What will I become?

"Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing
Through my open mind inciting and inviting me.
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns,
And calls me on and on across the universe"
-Beatles