Category: Poetry

every city
is a grid mapping lonely
with unfettered dreams

surely, life is just
a collection of deaths
each a stuttering memory
and the good parts
on repeat until the needle stops
or the pattern erodes a new melody

but then, i live
and die by my pen
like somewhere
in the bleak faded letters
their exists some face
i might recognize

i exist now
i exist right fucking now
and that’s all
the me of yesterday didn’t end
she just grew-up
and, you know, walked away

her eyes light
burning smoke like the charcoal, ashen
stain on the sky
above a barbecue pit

the world was laughing
this time with her
((not at her))
in the dreamy silences
of times wasted

so “here” devolved
into just a word
without a definition
to all of them
it was less than
a vague concept

still her eyes kept
burning as dusk became
inarguable
and they refused to stop
conversation trading away conciousness

my past follows me
like a baby elephant
on a leash
so when i go to the butcher
he points it out
and it fascinates him
he loves me
for i am,
in plain sight,
the pieces of
his humanity
which are unattainable
at night,
she sleeps on my chest
testing the strenghts
of my ribs
or she stirs and i do too
waiting for sleep
to crush us both.

your barely kempt blonde hair is a signal flare
my eyes can’t help but follow
as you grow smaller and smaller
reflecting me, optically, as a beast
i become the terror in your eyes
if you ever wasted your time to look at me
and you kept growing smaller and smaller
but i could only master wasting away
does every thing you see demand, eat me?
and what of when it does?
i’m not strong enough, little alice
i can’t take this surreal reality

what would they think if i were only a blurred reflection in your looking glass?

you buzz like a bad hit song on the radio
humming this is ours through static
like this was owed to us
as if tragedy can be measured
by the number of houses that fall
or the bodies that wash up on the shore
somewhere, somewhere someone recognizes the sounds
trees cracking like nature is attacking with all the force it possesses
counting its own as collateral
and grimacing, while people keep counting
the merit of one person
by the number of hands that wave goodbye
or the number of eyes that cry.

a fainting shadow
drapes slowly across the sidewalk
breaching reality
to collapse at rest

your eyes avert
and your body strains
to listen to the echo
but all you hear is the sound

my voice is craning to say:
i love you, i love you, i love you
at least there’s that
my love is just the sparkly glass
interrupting the sidewalk
where we walk.

i imagine us
two little kids
stained strawberry red
before the days
of the internment
and you would pin me down
and kiss my cheeks
or hold me close
your lips against my forehead
and our eyes would lock
while you fed me strawberries
like my lovers
feed me cigarettes.

the stars donated light
to my flesh
in their own attempt
to bandage the damage done
by their sun
so few hours prior
and as i stumbled,
drunk or just clumsy
it was your face
i remembered
so i looked again
and found new constellations
that must belong to this ranch
or just you and i
it was our faces connected
by a longing gaze
and the love we shared
was written there
like a poem around the moon

i thought,
oh, so that’s where
we can live and love together
and i wished the world flat
so we could jump
and land within ourselves
caught only by the tension released from our bodies
the fear of falling

the newspaper published a definition of justice
and printed it on a billboard
as you drive from one side of town to the other
the irony is that the bridge
moves you from the poor part of town
to let’s help
and justice is defined
as a personal responsibility
to do what is pure and right
like if you do those things
you’ll experience justice

the people on the streets
keep saying the media is lying
and i guess they’re right
but they don’t know why
and they just keep trying to say
that if you do the best you can
it’ll all work out
like they’re not doing the best they can to see that it doesn’t.