Cavity.

Hello again.
Here I am,
sword in hand,
trying desperately to destroy your coated world.
I want to watch you crumble.
Or at least,
in vain,
I want to watch you surrender.
See, I've grown weary,
of childish endeavors,
and adult shame.
I've grown weary of words spoken,
unwilling to hear a reply.
And in truth,
you hear these words as I do,
and I too refuse to speak.
But, it makes no difference.
I want to you to spit back what you took in.
I want to cut you out,
sword and comb in hand.

You court strangeness,
and spread it across your floor.
Mixed in with your newspaper clippings,
scraps of paper,
tidings of a past,
it has little room to breathe.

And yet,
you court your strangeness,
only to pass the time,
when your terrible,
beautiful,
and reckless sadness,
might return.

At one point,

I was a basin,

carved from stone and molten steel,

covered in ash.

And rain slipped in,

mixing in with the soot and dirt,

all over my cracking skin.

I became a canvas.

And then you came along.

With your brushes and pens.

Writing it all off,

like it maybe meant something.

But you spoke in softer syllables

than all the storms before.

Your quiet little whispers

fired off like gunshots in my ears.

Cataclysmic events,

that cracked the basin in half,

rattled inside my skull,

like trench fire.

Somewhere between the end,

the hollow bullets that conclude,

and the falsified beginnings,

the ones I wrote about in dreams,

you slipped in,

and spilt your paint all over me,

running away the soot and ash,

the stones and molten steel.

Iron

I watch your green leaves

go to war against the dead trees

that tower over you.

Burning like words tattooed

on my dried and dying skin,

you let ashes consume your roots.

You weren't made for this.

But somehow, you clad yourself

in charcoal and iron,

paint and plaster,

and cut armor out of the stars

and you ran, headfirst,

into the gunfire and smoke.

Between the ringing shots,

I watch you smile,

the way the ocean smiles

to the sun in the evening.

Your eyes swallow darkness

like your spent cigarette butts

that light the asphalt at your feet,

mixed in with empty casings

in the shallow pools spilled around us.

And I feel like burning this house down

so the smoke will tell me something

to whisper to you tomorrow.

I want to taste lead and iron,

plaster and concrete,

just so I learn to speak to you

amid cannon fire and roaring chaos.

I go to war, wielding nothing,

watching the way you cut up the sky,

the cemetery,

the dead tress that surround you.

I go to war, wielding everything,

and burn out the death that speaks to me

in the all the haunted dreams

you tell me to leave behind.

happy fools,

spinning in circles

inside my drink.

tornadoes of all my little smiles.

hurricanes of all my little devils.

hollow points inside the ice cubes

that adorn my cup.

i tip and spill.

for my fallen homies, right?

kissing the pavement

i crack my feet upon.

kissing sand and dirt

after i kissed god's lips.

make me feel human again.

make me feel real.

spit in rhythms

and speak in rem cycles.

hatred for universals,

but love for your criticisms.

so i do my best to kill my little darlings,

quietly,

but without mercy.

spinning circles,

these happy fools inside my drink,

tell me tales

of landmines and love notes,

of mirrored halls and minor hells.

no sins or virtues.

no times for curfews.

just love spilling over my eyelids

like happy fools

in my naked dreams.

The Conventions of Being a Horrible Human Being

most of the things i've said

have been buried beneath slate and sand

carved out with claw hammers and bare hands

i've learned through the most roundabout ways

what it means to be a man

and all these things i've said

are buried beneath mortar and land

all the things i lost in the tide

haunt all the things i never hide

and all the things i learned to love

left notes and apologies on my bedside

next to all the things i once was

bleeding onto the carpeted floor

running down words i let slip

hunting them like lions

upon the faces of fear

sweet and shifting syllables

that rocket inside my ears and inside my skull

remind me of something and another

the war horns and the horse hooves

the hellhounds and the angels

that run beside me in battle

that run beside me in sleep

that run beside me in death

set me free

i've gotten good at dropping bombs,

like spent bullets from rifles,

hard upon the face of the concrete.

i've learned to love the pock marks,

the cracks we avoid to save our mothers,

and the little wisps of hair and soot

that run between the steps i take.

i've gotten good at loving.

i've gotten good at looking.

i've gotten good at living.

but i've yet to figure,

with all my might and measure,

what good is good

when i can't tell what's coming next.

are you so desperate,

howling like lovers and mosquitos,

to be inside of my nightmares?

do you speak inside riddles?

do you speak in my sleep?

i spent the mornings of your resounding wake,

cold and calculated as they were,

burning up like plague and sulfur.

i am the prophetic whisper

that tattooed itself in your ears.

i am the prodigal son

that wrought havoc upon you.

I'm running around,

with my head cut off

and hands cut up,

this romantic apocalypse.

heart shaped burns

and "love you's,"

dancing lazily around

in gun smoke,

adorn my head.

i am the prince

of prosperity

and singularity.

Question of a Dream

In the morning,

Just about six or so,

There Is a light in the sky.

Never a sun to give it,

But it’s there.

And it always finds its way,

Somehow,

Past the curtains I drew tight

The night before.

While I lay there,

Half asleep,

This anomaly breaks in.

Here, I can feel you.

Beneath the blankets and behind me,

I can feel your depression,

Sinking in the sheets of the bed.

I can feel our fingers,

Playing with the shadows on my back.

I can feel your nails,

Tracing along my skin.

Vainly, I hold the smile you put there.

So I turn,

To whisper good mornings,

And whatever else,

To your pale eyes.

But you’re not there.

So I find myself on my back,

Staring at the ceiling.

And, if I close my eyes,

I can still feel you.

I can feel your ear,

Pressed against my chest,

Chasing for my heart beat.

I can feel your lips,

Idly brushing against my neck.

But just almost.

So I lay there,

Watching ripples of some light commodity

Break upon the ceiling’s surface.

*written in 2008

The back-alley angel,

who listens to prayers

echoed off cracked garbage cans

and chipped bricks,

I watch you drift lazily,

like the snow in my eyes,

I pull my coat closer,

cutting off the plague of cold and quiet

you're awake when you want to breathe,

but you're growing sick of sunlight.

i can see it in the way you spit,

bloodied and battered.

someone lied to you long ago.

someone made the mistake

of setting you free.

When it Rains, It Pours; When It Burns, It's Acid

The heat was sterilizing

and we were shouting lyrics

from one song or another

when we saw it;

a dead rabbit lying on the road’s shoulder

We stopped for a minute in mourning

and acknowledged the sadness of the moment.

Another rabbit, standing proudly,

had perched itself not four feet away.

Comically, I pointed and yelled:

You did it, didn’t you?

Almost as if he was in on the joke,

he looked at me for a moment

and bolted off into the darkness,

fading into the night

like our laughter into the humid air.

Not thirty minutes later did the night go sour,

staining the tip of my tongue

and leaving me wishing I had means for correction.

And as I walked home,

stepping lightly in between beads of rain,

rain that hadn’t shown itself for weeks,

I thought of the rabbit.

Lying quietly, whole, intact,

and yet still swallowed by death.

And I wondered who would mourn him

when the sun shown tomorrow.

Hemingway

i watched her sail across my eyes,

like a ghost in a hollow room.

the echoes of her feet touching nothing,

firing off in my ears,

like the incessant prattling of someone

who cared too much or too little.

see i’ve learned the difference

between walking in the snow

and walking in the rain.

i’ve learned a lot of things.

and i’m listening for the familiar buzz.

the one that tells me i’m allowed to lie to myself.

or at least,

for just a little bit longer

words are clean.

like knives and bullets and teeth.

or any instrument you meant to say,

for that matter.

words are clean.

and i’ve grown restless and listless

with the clapboard walls.

she still sails across my eyes.

but now little of it is left to do with anything.

tomorrow she’ll sail again.

and tomorrow i’ll smile idly,

wringing my hands,

as if to rip the blood from bone,

and dry them in the sunlight.