remember when we drank our rooms black
leveled love into something we could swallow
lips to the faucet now,
i bathe

light glitches
the planet snags
earth gives and does not give

acid hands solemn upon
black scabs
promise, a chanting wind
a cool well of reds
barely stirred

"...speech is not dirty silence
Clarified. It is silence made still dirtier."


-Wallace Stevens

A Natural Orchestra for a Story Book Beauty

This is an older piece.

She sits in her room

listening to 45s

as she stares out her window

Watching raindrops touch down

against the canvas of this desolate town

And the lonliness

begins to eat away at her hoplessness

and the hoplessness

only leads to more lonliness

and the boredom...

the boredom spins 'round

with the records that she bobs her head to

This single room apartment

smoky and dimly lit

only by a single light bulb

that hangs in solitude

amongst the cloudy, grey, damp air

Even the dust begins to die

in agony with the sound of the rain

against the window

"Each false thing ends."

-Wallace Stevens

walls dissolve
bury ache in empty space
the makings of pearls,
sea and sun hurtle
toward our white names

Solved by Sam Flot

SOLVED

by Sam fLOT

Flashing out from inside the burning inner being

Self-Learning indulgently to take in the flow

And accept what comes towards me

To make the best of all the waves informing me

Ceaselessly, slowly building chaos

Into some kind of chatterbox order

Sane only when considered with static undertones

Overlaid with blissfull excavation extended

Coming out from the natural middle

Coming out from consciousness of bended emergence

Combining clarity of vision to the physical world

Permeating any false considerations

Rendering them useless

So that when all the ifs are added up

And all the maybes are subtracted

Then we can understand the beauty of the rift

We find inside ourselves

Inside so far it was outside almost any type of

Literal canvas or painted window

Any drumskin or stop sign

Searing into the middle center soul

Based inside but often displayed to humanity

Like newborn chicks try to cross the highway

Blasting out in all directions

Exploding asteroid parts

Sent through the universe in perfect syncopation

Over dimensions already uncovered to finish up

With all these cohesive parts

Making one giant puzzle

Ready to revolve

Evolve

And be solved

compressed tempo
compartments, havens, the weight of space
song,
the cadence of days

The End and After (Working Title) - Chapter 1

this is the first chapter of something I'm working on. It was originally meant to be a short story. It has kind of grown from there, but I will be working on a series of short stories dealing with the same character but before the series of events that bring us to this "book," The End and After. Let me know what you think so far...negatives appreciated just as much as positives.

I had been riding freights for days. Waking up screaming to a box car filled with empty pill bottles and various garbage, from dreams of the way life was before the shit hit the fan. I could feel the train slowing down now, so I packed up my bag quietly in the dark, pill bottles rattling and rolling all around me as the brakes hissed and squealed. The train still slowing. I grabbed my bag and slid the door open. The night wind rushed in and I could smell pine and smoke. I was somewhere in the Northwestern Territory. Below me, a nice grassy hill. "Thank You for the little things," I said looking up at the sky and leaped off. There's no such thing as a soft landing in train hopping, but this was as good as it could get.

The grass was wet and my feet gave out beneath me. I slid for a few feet on my ass before rolling to a full stop. I stood up and brushed off.
"Coulda' been worse, McDell."

After months of riding freights and hiking the territories alone, I was completely comfortable having conversations with myself.

"Just remember ol' Willy Burnaski. Son of bitch never looked where he was leapin' and ended up half stuck in a tree. 'Course the other half kept on fallin' to the ground!"

I had a good laugh at my own sick joke. Of course, Willy had been a good friend of mine, but you just gotta' laugh at life sometimes. Keeps you from going insane after you've seen a thing or three. And I had seen my share just over the last five or so years.

Back in 2012, everyone was talking about the Mayan calendar and the world ending. And on December 24, 2012 some of those people were dead on. Only, it wasn't Wormwood or Planet-X or anything alien. Just our own dog world shaking fleas off its back. A massive earthquake sent a piece of Africa plunging into the sea, which created a tidal wave that completely wiped out what was once the eastern seaboard of the United States. Mass panic erupted all over the world, starting huge riots and total Anarchy. Governments were overturned or just given up on. I guess everyone just figured they were already dead. Millions died and mass suicide became very popular for the following few weeks. Luckily, I had been living in what was California at the time. After everything happened, I got in my car and headed east to see if I could help survivors. But there were no survivors; You were driving down a road that was once sprawling farm land, far from water, and all of a sudden there was the ocean. It was very sobering.
No survivors.

this ones gonna hurt she thought
as she lay down lonely for him
this ones gonna take the cake
and run away with it

this one, she though
this ones not
this ones not like all the rest

all tears will be bitter sweet
if the fire burns and dies
hearts are never hopeless
she lies helpless by his side

this ones gonna hurt she thought
this ones gonna make her cry
this ones gonna steal her heart
this one will change her life

Wine Thieves

Learning the styles of wine thieves
and layabouts
with their bohemian in the night
and their magic squalor

With blankets and pillows
And blankets of smoke
With artifacts of daily life strewn about
And art of fancy littering the walls

We wait in front of the collective unconscious
for the new archetypes
to show themselves
to the philosophers native
to philosophers raw and new

For them to make myths out of
And sing them to women like lullabies
In the blankets and pillows
And blankets of smoke
And wine stolen

My ex had a Sigmund Freud figurine glued to the dashboard of his van.

He was a psychology major and obviously, a huge fan of Freud. And on drunken nights, when I would reveal my "repressed" feelings or said something that intrigued him, he would turn little Freud's adjustable head over towards me. Then he would try to psychoanalyze me.

It bugged me out.

I broke up with him.

I was never really into astrology. I came across a book on astrology one day shelving in the non- fiction area of the 130s at the library I work at. To kill some time, I started reading it. They say those with the astrological sign, Scorpio, make great shrinks. Scorpios like to pry into other's thoughts, analyzing every single detail. They usually can read people very well. Yet Scorpios are some of the most secretive, private people you will encounter. It usually takes them a while to open up to people and don't like it when others pry.

My ex and I were born just hours apart.

My ex and I are both Scorpios.

picking apart law
invitations, alarms
the physics of kingdoms

So this waitress,
her eyes heavy under
the weight of piped in soft rock,
bad lighting, and another night
with walls heavy and creaking
and rotating,

and time slowing down,
and her head
stretching away from her
feet, pulling apart

she doesn't really think about physics,
and if you ask her about it,
her eyes just sink deeper
and no light escapes

a river of grace
shimmering drops of grease
in the sun
shifting colors
before my eyes
molten and prism-like
breaking down words and
thoughts to their
own unique hue

"I use to think that the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time... but it's not like that. It happens overnight." Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

Are You Awake and Free?

Are You Awake and Free?
by Sam Flot
10.18.oh2



Are you Awake and Free?

When will you even commence to understand?
When will the confluence of our powers be reunited and brought to fruition?

Are you Awake?

When will our physical beings come together to communicate on a realm other than existential?

Are you free?

Do circumstances leave you available for a chance to get together?

Are you Awake and are you Free?

Do you have the imagination, fear, pride and appreciation for beauty to keep up with us?

Do you have a sense of humor?

Are you Awake and are you Free?

Do you have an ability to lose logic and suspend impending reality?
Do you know how to punch with the Rolls?
Do you go with it or resist the flow?

Are you Awake?
Are you Free?
Are you Awake?
Are you Free?

Are you Awake and are you Free?

blink

to touch your face gently
and run my fingers through your hair
was an image
tossed and played in my head
quick, and fleeting

and for a fleeting thought
to suddenly become real
is astounding, yet comforting
our arms wrapped up in each other
our fingers intertwined

each holding on to the moment

It is her alluding that reels,
The noiseless picking and tolling
A mind superfluous
Is no mind

love hums the blood
beats the surface,
insect wings striking fruit

within the clothes
the bones clank
the palms pull closed

you never looked that good in blue

slaughter the innocent with me...
i brought enough to go around
lets spill intestines and bile
baby
we'll paint the town explosive
and eat chicken parts from garbage cans

don't run when the sirens blare
thats how you know its fun
and don't get any embers on you
its evident theres more to come

oh, one more chapter and this book is far from over
i'll keep writing if you keep telling me what it says
i'm not intangible yet darling im just slurring my inhibitions
got a ticket to the out house ballroom

meet me in the room marked fuck

Buddha's Brain Game

Buddha's Brain Game
by Sam Flot

Teasing Buddha's Brain Game
Situated by his buddy the bodhi tree

Facilitating a game
Of words and philosophy
Slipping subsets into genres
Slipping anthems from aphorisms

Spreading the words
Amongst the People of Peace
Who respect moments of Dharma
Dropped on their
Non-coconut heads

Not becoming a mango
But becoming understanding
Of the inter-relational basis
Of vibrations
Between me and the mango

Between me and
What I perceive to be
My illusion of myself

My perceptional mind-state
Understanding
How fruit and energy and
Chaos theory and
Elephants folowing elephants following elephants
Attached to each other

Leaving no elephant behind
To be alone

and

If you ask
Is it always because
You don't know
Or are there occasions
Where maybe you either
Already know the answer
Or don't need to know
But wanted to relate
Or wanted to cause
An interaction?

On a sidewalk
Or on a dance floor
Or in a heartbeating moment

Which may have just
Come and gone
Or which may be right now
Or maybe not just yet
========================
poem copyright Sam Flot 2008

I smelt the sea today
and the moist, briny air
cooled, and left my face
crusted in salt

into our palms we take
june, earth, our daily name
we seep into the world

"I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make. It is this that gives birth to meaning."
-Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes

apartments and cars with no air conditioning

sunburned skin
saturated in sweat
musky scent seeping out of pores
sultry summer days

eddie vedder
was a holy
seattle saint
soaked through
his flannel
and vocal chords
til all
the so human desperation
of north wood
and late nineties
leached
out
as sound
and halo

these new days
leave me
each one

as new men
each one

grasping
with fingers
so desperate
and hopeful
and clean

at meanings in
the sunrises

these skyline visions
lie and move
features of a great
sleeping beast

and we all creep as its parts
in the dark

suzanne
of the
long haired night
you
tremble in yr sleep
then turn over into
peace

i hate to see you
stumble in the storm
but
on occassion
the wind
and the light
and the multitude of dazzling
characters

will catch you
falling
just right

this mist
obscures
the peaks of
the Verazano
as these mornings
obscure myself

idol worship

Ernest Hemmingway drove an ambulance during the Great War

"the great interests of man: air and light, the joy of having a body, the voluptuousness of looking."

-Mario Rossi

525 Mountain

525 Mountain

I bought an umbrella on Wednesday. White, with a white handle. It’s the kind conscientious women buy when they’re getting married; I suppose it looks good in photos. I was thinking of using it to turn a poem into a sculpture.
This was just after the usual drive to work. I started the trip on the turnpike, in a gray haze that made the buildings and the sky seem like part of the same work in progress. The buildings looked untouchable, yet eerily close at the same time, as if hovering just above my dashboard, barely out of reach. From there, I exited onto Rt. 525, where, for at least 9 months, a crew of men has been either building a mountain or taking it down. Enormous vehicles circle endlessly up and down this giant mound of dirt, and the number of machines in use there increases daily, seemingly exponentially. On Wednesday, there was all of this, plus an airplane.
A good friend of my father’s used to have a plane that he would jump out of nearly every day, at least in the summer. I remember asking him once what it was like to fall through a cloud. He always looked at the uppermost edge of something, like a beach umbrella or a flagpole, in preparation for explaining something this important. All he could seem to come up with this time was that falling through a cloud is wet. He said that, the first time it happened to him, he thought it had started raining.
Yesterday, on the drive to work, it was raining and it was not raining. It felt like there was a sick student’s spittle suspended in the air all around me. Men in yellow hats had begun building a wall around the mountain, so I was thinking I would never be able to tell just what it was they were doing. For the first time, a red truck with a rainbow colored umbrella above it was parked at the site, selling breakfast sandwiches and hotdogs, so I figured that whatever was going on had to be something important.
When I got home, I watched something on TV about art and craters. Apparently lying in a crater keeps the horizon from seeming too hazy and the center of the sky from seeming too clear. So, if you’re lying on your back in a crater, the sky has the same degree of clarity no matter where you look. With the proper consciousness, said the astronomer who described all of this, this clarity makes you feel unimaginably close to the sky, as if you are in the atmosphere, and one with the universe. He spoke just like an artist, low and slow, only without the hesitation. He looked right at the camera.
This morning, I noticed that they had finally put a sign at the bottom of the 525 mountain, yellow and black, official. It’s tiny, and half hidden behind the wall. I was driving too fast to see it on my way to work.
I quit my job today. My students worked and didn’t work. Mostly, they made plans for the summer. I did everything I could to make sure they looked in the proper place as they painted, but nothing I did was successful.
On the drive home, I slowed down in front of the sign. A woman blared her horn, and the guy at the hotdog stand shook his head at me, wiping earth from his eyes. All I managed to read on the sign was something about a gravel company. So the only conclusion I can come to is that they are selling the mountain. I still don’t know whether they are putting it up or taking it down.

cool.

Tried to leave this as a comment but my internet service is being selective as to what windows it will open. Arg..

I think writing short stories is a great idea, not only because it can help with publications, but because it can help us address subject matter we may struggle to address in our poetry. I think it's often liberating to work outside of our usual medium.

PLUS it will kill more time at work.

"They say if you get far enough away, you'll be on your way back home."
~Tom Waits "Blind Love"

In an attempt to create a complete body of work, as writers, I thought it would be "cool" if we all tried our hands (quite literally) at writing a short story.

The idea here is to have it all published in The Idiom (I hope), our "sister magazine," if you will. And further more, to start shopping a more complete body of work around to be published by a larger publishing house (no offense mark, I love you).

After speaking with a few of you, I thought this would be a great idea since alot of authors write poetry and short stories and novels etc etc etc. Also, I just thought it would be nice to see some more stuff come from Walking English and end up in the Idiom as well.

The target being to have a final draft/post up on the website in July that would accumulate to anywhere from 2-6 pages, I'd say...but you tell me.

If putting it on Walking English worries anyone about plagarism, we could always mail it directly to the idiom or pass it amongst ourselves for constructive criticisms, cheers, sneers and Pam Griers.

Comments, Questions and Criticism are all greatly appreciated.

before pulling taut our answers

we slept

a slack hammock of questions

"To hell with the universe. Think of something."

-from Endgame, Samuel Beckett

I don't really know anymore
what's real
maybe someday
you can move back here
and we can be who we are
in all those dreams that we dream
or maybe
you're just my muse
something to fall in love with
on weekdays
when it's quiet enough
to think back and feel
the echo of memories
sting me in the gut

I remember why
I'm the ugly casanova
'cause you make me feel
like I've got it all

even with your
flirtatious criticisms
as we go back and forth
inflating
deflating
eachother's egos
just to see
who will lean in first

When I think of you
I think in poetry
and it all makes sense
every line sounds rehearsed
every smile seems faked

when I talk to you
I talk in poetry
it's gritty and real
but it just sounds so pretty
'cause I'm talking to you

You took the wheel again
and we began sliding back
down dark city streets
bellie's full of beer
and our hearts filled with youth
once again

here we are
rainy city streets
will always remind me of you
smiling back at me
from the driver seat
as I grip the dash
'cause you're way too close
on my side of the road
'cause you're way too close
for me not to fall in love again

every exit is an entrance somewhere else

-hamlet or rosencrantz and gildenstern are dead

to begin
as a movie
somewhere in the middle
with backstory

but to begin all the same
and wonder
if the phonix
perching with new eyes
still possesses memories

of what the old ones saw

the girl who likes rain
digs her nails in
the small of my back
like suggestion

all we are is eyes in the night
adjusting

when i said she looked great in the wind
i meant

the world was frozen breathless
it and the bustling just ceased all the spinning
an axis undescernable
only her hair filled up with dancing momentum
in all the punctuated static

i was telling her everything

and when she shifted one converse over the other
said thank you, tilted her head to the south

she was honest and subtle

her brown curles settled
and the rest began to unwind again

the color of absolute nude
late afternoon light
the buildings out of their skin

for your faces

she still waits

...and one by one,
they filter in
each on their own journey

...and to see them bright
back in her life
the simple beauty of moments only

...and as they come
on their own time
she smiles wide to greet them

for each one holds
a piece of her heart
those travelers
both brave and bold
that have come so far
to glimpse her shore
to share their lives
and smiles alike
to keep the wander
and lust alive

come filter in
you're all welcome
...so still she waits

a night not so enormous
narrow as a voice
with little intent
light enough
for the right wind to handle

We are seldom a distance,
though for days we have swallowed spaces
reached lengths with our breast and
seen our heaven persevere

We touch our caution like a brittle saint
breathe slow
adore the raiment
about our slender bones

words get full and burst
sunlight levels you
summer stumbles over you
your pages ache
there are names
you make
there are days you ache for pages

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

-from Hamlet

we ride trains

we ride trains
no destinations, schedules
only journey, discovery



and i wake up,
wrapped up in your arms
to the hum of the train
in comfort
we're still along for the ride

nothing left but weather
and everything else

finished with beginnings,
gift of reds,
the ancient pain of folds

my bleating flock of wants has stopped
nothing left but weather
and my strange weight

I would hear myself
My big dignity
I deserve wistfulness

But in late spring I resemble
Rot and sheen
Service and a strong occasional color

I am ornamental
Wrapped in wool and exhaustion
Sustenance and self defense

misfed malice

all this
all this
all this
loss

offer
offer
offer
offer

come find me
i don't know where to start

Why Men go Mad

The full moon

It will pull at the tides of your mind, AND at the responsive bodies of every woman exposed to enough of its milky light. You can sense it and you can smell them. You should remember the moon when you’re robbing liquor stores or writing poetry or dancing wildly for reasons you don’t understand. Know that cycles are ending and beginning tonight! That your frenzy is caused by gravity and biology! Know that this feeling is just low tide and wanting madly every woman in the world all at once. This is Romance! This is Science! But it is just the moon.

tossed into daylight,
my pavement scrapes gone blonde,
walking
your soft wall behind me all day long.

when the records stop playin'

wine bottles and cigarette packs
empty,
placed, and scattered
on the glass table
untouched
for weeks,
dust
collected
on the surface


she lies
on the couch
in the dark corner of the room
searching
for the light
that shines, awkwardly
through each bottle

unfortunately
moonlight
has a way
of washing flaws from you
leavin perfect silhouette memory

and i remember u in moonlight
frozen

theres a field unfindable
now out west
in dreams

and the grass tall
trembles slightly
and the lightnin bugs
flicker

their light hittin eyes like
memory or pain or beauty

and the moon shines on it at night
and its flaws get washed away

yr light hittin my eyes
like memory or pain or beauty

all the stimuli of this worls
all the stimuli of this world
all the stimuli of this world

no one dies, makes love, or ages

-triggering towns

allen caught walt all ragged and romance
wandering through produce

today
i saw you jack
wearing that crumby hat of desolation
in a walmart
in the slow hands
of misery cashiers
and the stoned eyes
of everyone impatient
and witing
in line

and in all those awkward spaces
between clothing racks
and the floor and the ceiling
in all that wide open and white

nothing like those spaces rolling and infinite
in the west above and between yr winding roads

all those mussed haired girls
perfect in one frozen moment
of light and shadow and bedsheets
that never caught up to the concrete
of tomorro

will always be
unchanging eternal
as marble or folklore

a frozen flame
of a star
burning in the perfect night

through all these days
all the ways
the light affects them subtle and infinite
all the eyes wet with life
and lips glimmerin below em
and the streetcorners all damp and accentuated
with perfect lamposts
all the curves and sharp angles
of women and towns and events and automobiles
those countless plunges the sun takes into a sea
that never boils

i have never seen anything
with more romance, more tempting
than the tragic flaw

boulder
coffe shop
a black clad couple
she
places a piece of muffin
in his mouth
slightly moving
the end
of her trenchcoat
across the floor


these are storms
the way air
from the great frigid terrifying
north west
wrestles stop signs
and the metal sound
rings out

the houses making noises like women

its midnight again
full moon
hungry, wants to swallow the sky
and you and me
and all the eyes strewn on these streets
the crystal fragile light
lifts
flaws from us
evaporating
so all the dancing women
shine invisible
the mens hands
dreaming of pale beers
and the feel of cold glass

I always wanted to be
one of those blackened faces
with hollow eyes
that you see in
old photographs

and I imagine
that honest life
holding black hands
up towards the sky
and dieing quietly
in a mexican desert

flood watch

the street

like a dark mirror

reflecting my

darkest desires

to disappear into

that black road

and go find

america

slow work
all this starting over
ordering loves
placing ourselves
making

the valium
softening
all the multitude
of stimuli

i become
the swirling motion
of Starry Night

the earth becomes
as cigarette smoke
wafting

and in that
we are intimate

sometimes i go to red cross blood drives
with nurses all in white and elderly volunteers
and sometimes i go to book releases

either way, we all wait around for our names to be called

then we spill a little part of our insides
through black microphone wires
or translucent iv tubing
secretly, in the cheap teeth clenched hope
that this act alone will redeem
all the other parts of us

then we eat chocolate chip cookies
and drink orange juice or coffee
and leave with a small piece of us out in the universe

sometimes i go to red cross blood drives
and sometimes i go to book releases

and practice the law of entropy

It's an old one 7/06

just
one
touch
your finger against my finger
as new lovers, we grab hold
as the friendship
slowly, breaks apart
piece
by
piece

at times, I'm
just fifty cents
and newsprint

I want to be in tomorrows paper
but it's doesn't handle the rain well
and the ink starts to seep
and the words start to drip off the page
and you and your history,
that moment they remember,
have no features

i can melt
or catch fire,
smolder or singe
or disolve


ain't it better to burn
than be yesterdays news?

rules and companions
consolations, clues
decrees to keep,
pleadings

contemporary

Days aren’t episodes
But I can’t always tell them apart
I’m a modern girl
Or a version of one
But I haven’t got the pocket science
Only the latent appliance fetish

I can see it all on the box
And listen to the old anthems
With a key stroke
I’ve got the right receiver
For all broadcast transmissions

Days aren’t episodes
I go out when the sun is shining
I’m a modern girl
But I still have all the Romance
And listen to the old anthems

Art is a loaded weapon and i'm a pacifist

time i got this off me
out of my interest
show them who i'm after
let them know this is no test
I fed the infant wicked
till they stood on crooked stems
now the caps spread over us
in a starless arrest

mmmmmm but how do i put you back into my mouth
how do i shove you back into this house
they saw we birthed an insectile fruit
reared on Apocrypha, a seven headed truth

let it all hang down
let them all see up the skirt of my sins
it feels like it's drenched now
the water's broke and i'm flooding the lungs of my kin
i'm bleeding out the door
those drops breed a hundred more
i'm not connected anymore
but i'm coated thick with matte black like a
harlot's cilia left on the floor

time i felt the softening
of meal spoiling worms
read between the chalk lines
and you'll find you never knew where you were
when you began to seek light
the hazy glo of knowledge
will erect you to speak life
into a dead man's ears and he will know
the evidence in his betrayer's guise
he will find revenge in a fortnight
and the certainty of bloodshed
sure does make us feel right

Derailed Cigarette Blues

i could smoke a cigarette on this train
i could imagine i'm smoking a cigarette on this train
through album cover cosmos we cut
the cigarette
i'm imagining
while i listen to certain heartache
2nd generation prophets
it makes me weary

no job
no car
your bills are unpaid
your mind aint flawless

shes swimming in your back yard topless and crazy about you
drinking in the sun
fights with anyone he can get his hands on
beat the shit out of an off duty cop
music ran off with his ear drums
are you bleeding
no better way to live
no no
just stop screaming at the inside of your head a while
shes always making you feel worth while

Raconteur Fest. Check it, kids! There will be a volcano!

The Idiom/Walking English have a table.
There will be a volcano!
Matt Fisher and Mike Noordzy will be playin some tunes.
The swans' artwork will be displayed.

(repost from myspace bulletin)
THE RACONTEUR FESTIVAL MAY 10th
What do a sword swallower, a young female folk singer from Seville, Spain, and an author whose latest novel, Skin, is slowly being written on the bodies of ten thousand volunteers (each who've agreed to have a single word tattooed on their body), all have in common?
RAC FEST! Acclaimed Authors - Live Music Sideshow Acts 2 PM, SAT. MAY 10 Find out more, visit:www.raconteurbooks.com

description

i sat amongst the rest
graced with his presence
hearing the words fly from his tongue
like song
but not listening.
i heard the letters that formed with the
movement of his mouth;
they formed syllables,
which formed words,
which formed brilliance,
exploding with feeling
that he had reached for
with his own bleeding hands
and pulled out
relentlessly
until we could understand.
i heard
but i did not listen.
i sat there, eyes strained
forcing back the wetness,
oblivious to his genius
focused on the messiness
that is my emotion.
the pain felt
having lost,
having found
was cheap in my eyes as
i looked at him,
his intensity embarrassing me,
and although my mind realized
his talent was raw and rare
i thought you'd do better.
he has manipulated his words,
switched them
back
and
forth
and
back
and
forth
and
you
sitting on a stage
speaking
freely
beats
him
standing there,
lights shining on his
polished head
stressing each syllable,
emphasizing each word.
he worked so hard to convince us.
i needed you then
to get up and look at us,
silence him
and show us that
when it comes to feeling
to truly feel
there is no need
to convince,
for it is revealed
purely through presence.

Girl, piece by piece

She comes to me piece by piece

broken

her eyes, ringed, deep, and hazy

I know she's been crying

she looks so old

and worn

It's how she loves

with all of herself

every time

Her smile means it

Her body means it

Her heart means it

every time

and they use her

like a drug

she gets them high

A quick prick to satisfy 

and just like that

she is the needle tossed aside

are we truly blessed?
or is this
damnation
forever wanderin
between coasts
and countries
and planets
and states
of mind
Rabbit says
home is freedom
and comfort
and I'm a
Forever Wanderer
I don't wanna
hang my hat up
i don't wanna
stand in one place
just to let
the world
spin around me

How long could I be a work against his dark banner?
I would rather frighten and receive,
Inextinguishable.

I sing him handfuls of centuries
Superfluous realms

Oceans, industries
I lay down days

There was also an old jukebox

Do you remember that night?
You and I went to the city to hear my friends band
But you knew laughingly that you weren’t going to like them
And we parked near a chain link fence near construction
And it smelled like construction dirt

We were early
And slightly awkward about where to eat
We had burgers in a restaurant that had paintings of elephants
And the air conditioner was too strong
You’re friend was in town
The healer

And…
Checkered floors

The bar had checkered floors
And you weren’t impressed with the band

We were standing outside smoking
With your friend
The healer

And some kids took us to a rave down by docks and factories

Do you remember when that happened?

American Playground SuperNova

Give me swings
So I can feel it all
All the stomach lifting ups and downs
All the breakneck change in perspective
And some kind of giddy absurd high

Like flying recklessly down a wet and winding highway
with the top down to the storm
Smelling the ozone
Our oil and rain
Toward some thing solid and ridiculous
Toward some fantastically nonsensical explosion

That will surely make a star

significance and cloth
elegance and panic
my eager dread
my uncoiled decay
passionate and passionless
a medicine.

We will all recover.

you fall hard, it hurts

she told me
to watch out for those guys
guys like you
with those seductive eyes
that draw us in
the wit, the charm
a mask
to cover
lies
and dancin' eyes

let's talk enormous
glory and gore
storms
let's shed
let's get wet

invitation

i can't let you in.
the table's set for two
and there is someone
lingering
behind
you

you first

You cover yourself in hate
And I’ll cover myself in lust
And well see
Who gets to hell sooner

Its suposed ta be easier

What happens to your soul
When you die
When you’re not in love
What happens to your soul
Then
What happens to you’re soul
When you die
And you’re not in love
What happens to you’re soul
Then
You’ve got to do something
When you die
You’ve got to do something
When you die
When you’re dead
When you’re dead
You’ve got to do something
But you’re dead
And you’re not in love

Johnny

Let us be dangerous
And stare into my deep black eyes
All pupils
And I stare into your
Hard plastic bit
And pretend you have eyes
Soft and yielding
Just like mine
It’s so dangerous

update: ex-communication

Hi ho! I've changed phones recently, same ol' number but all of your digits have vanished in the switch. I miss everyone and i can't call and harass you kids with my wily west coast shenanigans anymore! Please call me and update me on your lives! I want to know about em! I'll be able to save your numbers to my new phone that way as well. Cheers!

Live like you mean it!

~*

godspeed to you
miami girl
rushing north
with flowers in your hair
with nothing but love in your heart
and your promises of sleep
godspeed to you
jersey girl
in reaching home in time
'cause I'm not sure
if I'll make it
but I'll try
you're always worth
the weight on my shoulders
you're always worth
my difficult smile

I had a date with Bukowski.
No change for coffee,
So I brought him the piss awful stuff from the faculty room.

He either didn't mind
Or couldn't tell the difference
He wouldn't stop talking.

He spoke to me in the back of my pickup truck,
Taught me things
While America's youth suffered inside without me.

It was all very romantic.
I went home, took a shit,
And wrote a poem.