Destiny

To you, I devote Destiny. I did so when you died, but today, on paper. From you, I draw strength.
It is never too late to say goodbye, though you should know you never left.
My uncle, I miss you dearly. We all do.

What Heart Knows

What Heart asks for. Thread for the needle. Words for the water. Meat for the bone. The heart asks for substantial blood. The heart asks quietly, because no heart wants to hear itself. The heart is a folding explosion. The heart is denied its attachments, because the heart might get pulled from it's station. The heart is a stranger to the ribs who cage it. The heart has a language that rhymes every word and every breath. The heart is the dread under the breast. The heart is tenderly smiling and violently thrusting. The heart is too big for the soul. The heart never leaves. The heart wants to stop. The heart beats itself to death.

Sweet Piece of Mind

I have a tyrant's hunger
for well-defined shapes.
easily described, analyzed;
more of the hard-to-hold,
"feel with your eyes" types.
I search in my living space
for currency to coin, little
tempered adages to give;
my charity to you, a gift
of words filled with vacant
glass, a smack of void from
my deleterious hands.
wait

Transatlanticism

field

Darling, you challenge me to forget
Intrusive thoughts of slight are
All I've been trying to wring.
They're solid in this space, square,
So elegantly sharp on every side,
and they fit perfectly together,
Even if they are an infidelity
on this plane of states.
I recur through my questions on how
I could walk among these cracked old steps
After all these years, my direction is the same.
But I must remark on my masochism...
These reminiscences bring me to depth.
My illusions make me happy,
And happy is nothing without complaint.

more on artifacts

it's about something small
to hide away, keep from safe.
it will make a bastard sigh.
fill't with gold, i sit beside Them
my social slavers and
structure-less soliloquy
on how the artifacts could never last.
there's a taste of iron in my vine basin,
though under this mound of pitch and rust
i seem to have unearthed my polished sin

Quietus

For all the different days of the year, I had weeks for each stored in my memory. I relived every moment that ever meant a thing to me. I am reliving a moment right now. Tomorrow will feel like today. Tomorrow will feel like last week. All of my cigarettes are gone.

I could hear the synthetic chirping of some kind of machine next to me. First a chirp, then a screech. My eyes shot open. I couldn’t work out where the light was coming from, but it was too bright. I got angry. Who put me here? I began to panic. I needed a cigarette. All of my cigarettes were gone. I turned over in my bed. My cell was high in some compound, the walls reeked of torpidity. Someone died here. Many have died here. This place was mathematical.

I jolted my body off of the bed. I wasn’t restrained, but I was drugged. I felt something dislodge from my nose followed by the familiar scent of a bloody nose. I had an interesting childhood. I was tough. I will get the fuck out of here, I told myself.

A familiar voice interrupted my mental thrashing. I rose from the ground in the arms of an angel of some sort. Brightly colored blue attire, a wedding ring, a very familiar perfume. I could not make out her face. I couldn’t speak to her. My words were seeds for some other season.

As I began to calm, her voice began to stand out amongst the bustle of beeps and alarms and shrieking and sighs.

Mister Vanda, You’ve just woken from a coma. You need to relax and try to focus on what I’m saying.

The illusion was much more amusing. It took many minutes for me to become fully aware of my insignificance. I was paralyzed, unable to speak, and I couldn’t breathe. Perhaps the latter few of those problems were related. In the mess of these thoughts, I feel back into sleep.

I woke to cigarette smoke, the sun no longer an offender of my eyes, not a soul but the woman beside me. She was clearly different from the nurse, her silhouette was lithe and her hair was neat. It was too dark to speak confidently about what she looked like, but the second-hand smoke was beautiful. I could smell it through the tubes of plastic. I began to tilt my head and speak, but as soon as I stuttered out a greeting, another bath of blinding hospital fluorescence ripped through my will. I muscled through. I adjusted. It was my wife, definitely. The last memories I could speak for in my waking life were with her. Wanting to leave her. I can’t remember if I told her. It was an interesting conundrum… but I could not, with any measure of effort, remember much before or after those few days. They seemed only moments away, easily accessible, but lonely in my mind like a few books resting against each other on an otherwise empty bookshelf.

//To re-frame, re-cut, and re-post later. This is merely an outline.

it's okay

I never forget where my roots went
and came.
I fill myself with wistfulness because
I can't seem to escape my lonesome
fate.
It would seem my life is a series
of small flames...
I keep anchoring myself in anguish,
and it all traces back to a flower
i can't remember.
let alone retrace the meaningful arcs
of your face, or understand
the bastardized version
of yourself you became.
we all come from different seeds, it seems,
and mine and yours were meant to meet
but the world is unkind,
and not every future is fertile.
you and i were a bramble of
bad decisions...
but for all the thorns I struggled in,
I hope I never forget those days.

The Letters are Never Dead, But They Certainly Don't Stay

Painting it with dabs of dirty red
It seems our summer never ends
There's one heart beating
With an elevated feeling
And you're coming swinging
With fingers crossed
With singing composure
In your thorn enclosure
I couldn't keep you closer.

I have irrigated from your visions
your botanically forlorn little finger...
Couldn't cultivate a hole to band.
Exchanging moments of hermitage,
Your lovely hair, bourbon threads
Sharing shreds with your closest
Friends.
Your little links are murmuring,
whispering disbelief from the
soles of their connected feet
Children should not behave this way.

attempt: song

let me open up my throat
i got liquor in my bones
n im always feelin broke
cause i keep fallin into hoes

milk you for your worth
n put you on a shirt
im chillin on a bad trip
cause im sleepin in a bottle

fill it up with what you see
hurtin me, learnin me
i'm tired of lying down on this glass
while youre burnin me

fear enters the stage
like rapids on old boulders
there are children at play
making toys of what you made



...this poem isn't working.

i can't write on weekdays.

root you

when you pass
light flows out of you
drowning for moments here,
I see you everywhere
this garden of mine, my dying shrine
feeding my roses and hydrangeas
all black now, only my past is blue
when you pass
they’ll come after you

Courtesy

Crawling through thorns for roses,
from spring to fall.
You are full of words for beauty,
And though I know you have many share
I know you can never give them to me.
I am without complaint.
I am satisfied to have turned your eyes.
To pronounce your grace, of all my efforts
My only utterances were words.
I am satisfied.

ensconced in melancholy

fossil

with auburn brushstrokes, i draw
little leaflets spelling out your name
n e v e r a g a i n.
stirring the bitter lip-biting moments
out from underneath you.
you have dirt under your nails, and in your hair-
time buried you where nobody would ever look
between the cobalt and coal, blackened by old souls
in untold stories, scars around the eyes of smoky storms
jolting hearts from rest,
to remind us of the weather before the sunset
the rain on that desert that held your regrets.
i am the rib cage you walk out of
when you forget a silver spoon,
to find a rusting stilleto and hide it away,
disease you can come back to.
your own little decay.

all but the heart

Filled to the deck
with spoken slurs, disturbed
What did I fill you with?
All but the burnt, blistering heat
beating beneath me.

Outside of view,
yet only open to you,
your pacific dry spells
and your deep, meaningless wells

conflagrations of black birds, migrating
out of view, reminding me of you
and all of the things that are unwilling,
distilling

viscous sky

i know places where we can go
to be alone
but i don't want to be with you
if you don't feel like home

caught up in your viscous sky,
i opened the moon and looked inside
what could i do or say about my shame?
you are just a reflection of me
and all of the things i never say

maps

life is a coin on both sides.

Thunder In Your Folds

Bespoke with thunderbolts
Lit by something you could never hold
And the sulfur in your matches
Lit by sudden bites of cold
Burning up your rose
Becoming what you love
Lit by what blisters in your soul

Thunder in your folds
Thunder in your folds

ambulance

Sometimes a branch of mine finds it's way here
I have to ask, how could one person do so much damage?
I feel like laughing, but nothing ever happens

I tell the joke you already know,
You're always first to the punch...
and I'm always late to the show.

I can't control this thing underneath my nose
It just stays closed and reflects my soul
Always lets the heavy lifting go unnoticed,
am I just a lock that will remain unopened?

I don't have anything to say -
It's not that I feel choked, but
If that's all I've ever been,
Could it be that I am and just don't know?

I don't want to be the last thing you see.
I want to reflect myself on somebody,
at least for the time being, feel around for
something living, perhaps breathing.
I want to stop sleeping.

wolf on water

so i am soaked
floored
walking on water
voyeur
looking down on you
and your mind that's on me
these ripples are in reverse
and i am robbed of reality
can't move or see
nothing but murk underneath
and i'm still on your leash

drft

woke you on a weak end
broke my way in and healed a hand you didn't have
we never were
a key with no lock and nothing to hide
i am all here
far from you.

now only when i erupt
you are my ashen warning
but my fading betrays me
and i stay awake through another day

eviscerated this vice of mine
speaking to you to pass my time
you encouraged me to break my rhythm
so i stopped rhyming with you.
you were only a liquor love.

m e m o r y f o a m

how many times
i wish i said hello. i could have made a mark
stole the show.
but i just sank into my own below.
where the same person is in the same space,
where she never leaves and even though i can't even
remember her face. she's everyone.
how many times i wanted to just show you i was worthy
of a connection but all i did was just hold the phone.
she's approaching me, but i have this feeling like i can't
make my heart come up to speed. she walks right through me
and i don't know if she saw the seed. i just regret never having
sewn a thing.

lilac lives another day

not well-received, she walks away. angry, almost explosive, she lets out a shriek. it's everything to me, she weeps. everything to be believed. she nearly doesn't survive the encore, yet alone she stands, parasite-stricken, broken heart, shaking hands. she makes her demands. she becomes floral, adorned and ornamented by the passions of They, the comfort of They, the security of They. she waits there, among they, humming about her days with you, remembering but not recalling you, with your broken hand (which she couldn't give back). she gets home safe. she stays awake. she doesn't sleep, she just waits.

Binary

My crime of passion, you are me seeing red.

You are not the world, you are the axis on which it spins.

My every other word, you are the filaments between the fury.

You are not the supposition, you are everything that’s real.

My darling conviction, you are the heart of will.

Paint (my worst work in YEARS)

You are indescribable, yet
You are all I've ever known.
You are as simple as a smile.
You are a heart entire, of which I have two.
You are years beyond my reach, yet
You are here for me, in my unforgiving state.
You are the grapevine, threading yourself into my soul,
You are the grapes I pick to perfume my moments.
You are elevation, elation, everything that starts with e.
You are what makes me happy, and
You are something I may never have.

Call of the Void

heartProblems

when it beats so hard it hurts
your nerves begin to turn
against your will
you clear your throat and speak
a language with no words
for I Love You

silent sonnet

this is a silent sonnet for a moment that never came to pass
for a person i've never met, i love you, but i'm glad i never asked.
this is about a struggle i've never faced, a pain i need not embrace.
for a memory that doesn't exist, floating like a leaf that never fell
on a lake that never swelled. this is a story that need not come to an end.
this is everything i'm glad to be, this is for all of you i've kept away from me.
this is patience, patiently walking. forward, alongside you, to meet in some other season.
for a fruit that will ripen, from something slowly sprouting, from within two people
who may not have met yet, who may never meet again, who may meet some day,
who may stay away, who may remain, who may, who may, who may today.

the arms of comfort are binding you

Starchild

You're an egg waiting to hatch. Lit ablaze at the strike of my match, born again when I've taken you apart, shown you reality and given you a place to start. You are nothing new, you are the tears of a galaxy, you are everything inside of me. You are where I want to be.

the story of the city that lost you

Darling deserter

I know you said you'd never hurt us
But what you're doing feels like murder
Please don't ever sleep
'Cause you'll dream of a better life
And I just want to be be at your side
 for one more night