baklava

It's these opaque days seen through grime tinted shades
when you've been talking to yourself too much
that you become involved with the subtleties
of your feet sinking into the floor,
ensconced in macabre day dreams
of water, you're surprised that you manage to consume so much
with all the fear roiling around in that stuff
it's living in the food you eat grown by unknown hands,
does that put their blood in your stomach,
it's in the clothes you wear, which smell faintly
of displacement and sorrow woven in with the stitches.
Stretch your surprise until it looks like chagrin
when you realize you're almost content with this
reduced life, internal prattling with past and future,
it's their company you keep, present is never anywhere but in her cups,
and its just as well when the infinite can be held in your hand
while now is so close to the eyes that it slips by unknown.
You know that this growing heavy is inevitable
that one day the ground will shiver and refuse to hold your weight,
you feel the possibility of being plunged into the unknown
with the monster that waits, and it isn't with fear
but a warm relief, to be embraced-
your mother didn't realize it was death you inhaled
when you struggled forth and wailed those first perfect sounds-
reliability should be comforting, but we alternate between angry and afraid.
In the dark life looks like a poorly done painting
found in a thrift store when you were young
of a little boat tossed in waves of brown and green and gray
thick paint tossed on by the untrained
and you bought it, liked the texture you say
it doesn't wipe away all that's been done wrong
but builds layers upon.
What are you made of,
if not manifold layers separated by everyman's heartache-
then thin sheets of nothing I say, an over indulgent baklava of decay.

Salt

The air is tepid
stagnant as the swamps that puncture this swollen land
I was born to this, welcomed in August
my squalling form balking at the lack of temperature control
sweat beads unbearably
where skin touches skin or cloth
as if this large organ forgets how to breathe here
and I wonder if I could drown in it.
In a show of irony
to follow with the theme of things
I am chilled bone cold and ill
with the feeling of feet that sweat like ice
left under this cruel unseasonal sun.
Whisper, I hear your mind
wading through the same crush
perhaps we will be battered in the same wave
and salt will finally feel fresh on weathered skins.
I move through the house
cradle my cat, but salt does not penetrate his coat
so I stroke until the air turns black with fur,
if I had a decent lamp
this space would be red and brown
but even animals are untrustworthy now.
I don't think about words like,
of course we move through alone
and, how could anyone think otherwise
when recalling our beginnings and conjuring our ends,
because there are no words left, only their ghosts,
feeble ineffectual feelings.
I remember when I was a kid and smile for that time
before I was forced to accept myself.
I move through the house
I touch my fingers together, every rough tip
as if that were doing something
as if time must be occupied
before I realize I'm pressing too hard
too late and I'm causing myself pain,
it seemed perfectly normal at the time.
Objects are extracted and moved
I feel their futility in my hands
an unbearable weight, beautiful waste
furniture is pushed around
shoved beneath hands so covered in salt
that I might slip and crash to the floor like
surf breaking, but less majestically
and with no beautiful sounds.
Shut my phone up with the silverware
so that it can learn to become more useful
hide my eyes to keep my mouth company
someone must see me smile.
I don't think of strange words
and what particular meanings they might possess for me.
Expressions are all pulling in the wrong places
I've got sleeves on my legs
and socks pulled up over my wrists
and I wonder why I'm looking so crooked in the mirror
mouth on backwards and I'm forgetting how to speak.

speak in tongues

Lets speak in tongues
saturate ourselves in heated silence
tie our fingers together and trade eyelids
id like to see what it looks like
peaking out from someone else's blood,
lets forget everything we've ever done
or never did
and try to live
like the animals I've always known we was.
Let's speak in tongues
and win each other over to our better sides,
ill open you up and fix yours if you'll work on mine
I might need to be rewired
but you look like a handyman
who has a habit of keeping his hands busy
so retie the strings that snapped
and spread white dye on the outside,
all this work could take a lifetime,
and you're on the clock but I aint payin a dime.
Tuck me in, I'll sleep for years
in between,
fold me up like a card table
after you brush off that old puzzle
and we'll see whats changed
when we manage to unwrap our skin
and wander out from this haze.

I see

There are things that weigh heavy on me
like the pressure that comes from diving too deep,
as unwanted as predators camouflaged in suits
circling sidewalks to peddle their convictions,
that we are all convicted unless we adopt mutual opinions.
Like squeezing blood from a stone
life leaves me slowly, icing from a bakers piping bag
only not as sweet, not as purposefully put together.
There are things that press unbearably,
pulling back only when suffocation is imminent
when the amount of myself left
can be measured in teaspoons
and the curved tusks of my torso
sound the splinter that precedes a break.
A strange and intimate relationship do I entertain
with the heady impressions that life projects onto my mind,
all the small deaths endured, the tragedies observed
as unhealthy as it is satisfying
like fetish sex with a prostitute
because you've caught your past trailing after you
like a second shadow
and this is the only way you can get off.
I see a woman made of watercolor
watery eyes and soft paper skin
she must have dried this way, sitting at a bus stop
thin mouth dripping into chin
a drooping slit that belies the happiness she's had
chest dripping into the curves of hips
once indescribably useful
(to her husband who left proof of his love there
and to her sons who borrowed the lines of her life to create their own)
they're made of plastic now, or lay broken beneath the skin
like the english she no longer attempts
like loved ones resting beneath the crust of the land.
Her life has been full of cracks
and everything has fallen through, gotten lost
like eastern seas sifting in her memory
through a bounty of unbound hair.
I watch an ambulance part traffic
ambling uncertainly
even as the child it attempts to reach
who with wild pride unraveled the mystery
of a lock
and ran laughing into traffic.
I have no control over this ramshackle house
whose windows are too well used
whose walls are riddled with holes and a door that wont close,
all manner of things creep in and bed down in the floor boards.
I watch a homeless man who doesn't beg
but poses on a bench
resigned to a life that is too longly lived.
A young woman is kept awake at night growing pain in her eyes
and stains beneath her black lashes like smudges
of the toxic thoughts she cycles through,
the moment before I die will I regret my life
is everything flavorless or am I loosing my desire to taste, to try.

bone deep cold

My extremities are full of ice
bone deep cold rattling me like a bag of baby teeth
saved in the despair of some unfathomable nostalgia
rag doll hung out to dry in winters whistle
the wind cuts me to the quick
no relief, not even in an ocean of cloth
poured over me endlessly like layers of terra firma,
oh were I the metal core
radiating heat like our sun
but I have found myself more akin to the moon
always hiding herself half in shadow
with no one to lean on but the earth
who pushes from so far away.
Something spreads through my veins
like saline pumped into a network of life sustaining roots
they spider and weave their way around ice and bone alike
and everything cracks and breaks like glass under the pressure of sudden change,
cant be moved too quickly between extremes, from cold to heat,
but body is mendable and eager to be remade, reset
by the expert, sure mind and steady hands.
I need to bathe in flames like the salamander
to be split by lightning and burned from the inside,
reborn like new growth that forms where the struck tree rots.
Roast me, find my corners and cook me through,
as a previously frozen cut of meat,
taste me, I'm edible
despite my unfavorable means of self preservation.

production

Where did you go
slipping away from my eyes
to become more like yourself.
I  sulk to have missed the process,
and though Im divorced from the project
im still a consumer harboring curiosity
as to how these snacks were created,
maybe someday ill see the presentation
that expresses each step of your creation.
Will my face flash by in the process
am I in the beginning middle or end
of your production, fabrication.

A Woman Scorned

My anger stems irrationally from knowing
that I am loved mostly by myself and that I am alone
and that loneliness is a constant companion to the mind
that can somewhat consider itself.

I convince myself briefly that I would rather be dumb
and numbly going through the mundane motions,
whatever those are -surely something bland and lacking
internal zest and carnal frivolity
exhibited by minds riddled with scars that look like the word SIN
as if imprinted there by flesh crackers, the zealots ecstasy.

I can almost convince myself that mundane means happily oblivious
but even that sort of imaginary reprieve is tragically fleeting
existing momentarily before being dashed away
like the unfulfilled body of something small and new
tossed out of a car moving along the interstate
it lasts the span of one lovely swallow
before being beaten out by the thump of my mean soul,
its sweet and short like the intake of new air rushing over lungs
newly learning to swim, but taking too long and thrown in.

There's no obligation on the end of those I've chosen to receive me
or more specifically I mean those parts of me
which at the time seemed prepped for performance,
I recall no contracts saying that one must cherish me
THIS MUCH until I see fit, and yet
my anger is raw, a natural phenomenon forcing all things away
like the rushing walls of a hurricane,
it does not allow itself awareness or time to consider the injustice
of un-calculated devastation
and so it goes on casting small things asunder,
it does not even spare itself
but spirals out into dark bodies or rocky shores
reduced to unrecognizable drops of water.

The sons

The sons of man love like bats
sporadically moving from kill to kill
twitch from the fly to the gnat
weave into a blood fat mosquito
they're all much the same
similar enough to require no names
even the desire for an exotic insect when obliged
is devoured, shat out, the cycle begun again.

To truly know another

To truly know another
is to comprehend the breadth of the universe,
to perceive light
as it travels flightless from our sun.
It is to hear the voice of god,
to speak with dead brethren,
to defy gravity and move gracefully
through blue skies
sans the gift of man made flight apparatus.

I don't desire the fragment of a mind,
that small and inconsequential piece
of a vast and incomprehensible puzzle-
what is it worth, so pre-meditated,
to be given the thing that another places value on
by the judgement of the critical and ever probing public eye.

I wont settle for the shadow of a life
whilst pouring myself out,
(emptying my vessel of innards
into another's uncomprehending
and consequently ungrateful maw)
all those parts that make strangers squeamish;
the dirt the diamonds
the raw and rusty thumping bleeding ruptures,
the ingenuous softness
like something small, endearing and unnervingly honest,
the ghastly emotions and deplorable blanks
the empty empty blanks that leave us...

and the traitorous signs that blink bright fluorescent
turn away! turn away! turn away!  
All these rough rubbed parts of man,
the beautiful inglorious hideous
parts of man
lovable loving hateful hating
these small porous holes
and the great gaping places, which weep
constantly like ulcers and spread
if un-tended to.

I can only unzip
as far as the ragged metal teeth
of this flaccid reality allow,
and even then, even now
I'll keep the clasp above largely clawed
together.

It's not in my cards, this joker.
Freely giving love and receiving
equal rations.
I in my ignorance threw him out long ago
to reach the appropriate number of cards,
to cultivate the perfect hand.
Should have kept him in a quiet drawer
tucked away, private store,
but I threw him in the waste bin
and Ill see him
no more.

Be careful

Be careful what you strive for. We desire things obsessively: Other people, specific persons in the flesh, a unique persona, a sense of self or more likely the sense that others have an appealing sense of your self, individuality, recognition, a place, a path, a connection, a commitment, love, passion, fulfillment, everything right now, before, it's getting late and you're owed happiness aren't you? We seek things out single-mindedly, fiercely, often maniacally! To find upon acquisition that in the prior wanting of what we recently received we were only distracting ourselves from something else- inner silence, emptiness, something like a black hole; largely debated and yet entirely unknown, something divine in it's mystery, something perhaps better left unrevealed. We never really knew what we wanted in the first place. How can an animal that constantly changes and possesses little to no instincts know anything of it's self or it's "soul" and what that intangible thing in question requires? I (doubting even it's existence) will attempt to lay the fate of my worldly satisfactions at Her feet, having no faith in the judgement of my convoluted and far removed mind.  Accept the things that come to you without expectations. Look to nature for guidance. See how water is easily manipulated by physical force and yet retains the ability to wear away earth and fire and metal. The ocean with such tranquil sounds breaks against the sand, manipulating and destroying it. It burbles in the creak, calming and quiet until it reaches it's larger brethren. It rages down rivers and furiously razes the land, a sound if listened to without fear could be nothing but breathtakingly beautiful.

my mind

My mind runs around the track like a race dog chasing the mechanical rabbit slave dog performing in a pungently backwater display of evolutions absence chasing falseness the promise of something instinctually desirable or once tasted and forever coveted how cruel to give the beast a scrap of game just to keep it running round without comfort without love touched most by six sides of a cage and the memory of inky pins imprinting identity or whatever the breeder thought that was or should be how many times can I travel the damnable raceway these trenches of churned mud where comrades have blown their last unfulfilled blood riddled breathes before I become obsolete maybe if I’m lucky someone pulls me out puts me in a home where humans walk on eggshells for fear of my past rearing its ugly head and ripping the falsely peaceful present to ribbons.

what is

What is love and what is hate

are they comparable to such phenomena

as good and evil/ light and darkness

they say you cant have one without the other

but that theory has always seemed (infuriatingly) flawed-

i.e. ‘you cant have your cake and eat it too’

(I can’t imagine what the concocter of that expression

was doing with it,

I typically waste confections by consuming them).

Don’t they feed from the same vein

love and hate

from our ineffectual feel good passions

those that leave us starved and crazed

or inspired and praised-

paradox is the spice of life

assuming we are all metaphorical sufferers of IBS.

Where is love and what is hate

do they live in our chests

are we children

or is it a chemical defect, an over-allowance of something

that casts us into this unfortunate position.

Spit a globule of affection into your hand

and spread it across my psyche if you can

what are we if not mammals, beasts

I need honest conviction to believe in anything-

thank dishonesty, the ever expanding benchmark of humanity-

I don’t blame all of us,

only those who knowingly parcel out lies

in neat packages labeled absolution, deception.

What is life and where is love

there’s hate

floating across my mind, I see it

an oily film across our lives

projected from the asshole of every sentient speck.

We cant help but love our sadistic furies

sayeth mein soul fuehrer.

The Plight of Raising a Child

Is it by moral deficit,

a sad deficiency of my humanity

or by a more desirable quality

that I find myself explaining the bare bones of death

to my two year old son

in terms of truth

and not by means of overladen 

and subsequently meaningless metaphors.

I can not spill words of heaven

over his pliable mind

like the ridiculousness of holy water

or two pieces of wood glued together

to ward off evil- an abstraction 

ironically, hysterically 

maddeningly! man made-

like daylight savings time and monsters and morality.

There will be no delusions 

of an uncharted utopian realm 

too far to reach (sans effervescent wings)

which awaits the sinless (a word begging ridicule)

as if the dead are noble ambassadors of the living

and not in fact mounds of expired matter to be burned,

to gouge the land with long boxes full off nothing

but vain sentiment. 

I find comfort in finality

closure

death is the end

and all other explanations

are absurdly

imaginative.

heavy eyes

I wonder where you go with a face as heavy as stone.

Do you carry consternation like contagion? 

It overflows into the souls you catch with those heavy eyes,

the weapons of a man who imagines he carries the woes of Prometheus-

you will always be a child

compared to the myriad of life that thrives around you 

(is that where hate stems from?).

Like the original sacred whore

perpetually laid out beneath the expanding blue sky

you moved through strange flashing moods

and tore through the layers of all that was left,

love and love and love-

equational instructions for building trust

(until you wielded the eraser of your cynicism

and removed the components we needed

to reach the far side of the equal sign).

But I'm wrong to compare you to the Earth,

you with your black moods.

Even Poseidon's lifeless trench couldn't match them

and if I am the mother and you my consort

what of the rains you produced,

they were made of salt

and eroded the planes they poured through. 

Meconium

I remember affairs I haven't experienced,
taste them on my tongue as a child
envies the indulgences of every other lunchbox-
those are superior too (higher quality smarter plastic brighter images,
with statements du jour involved in their making)
more desirable, if only in so far as their unattainability.
Self loathing is less complicated than empowerment
and earning my keep requires more effort than coveting an others;
the cycle is as we feared,
endless or is it unendable I mean unendurable, disgustingly predictable-
a trick or circles within circles forced easily into squares,
but what will fill all the empty space at the corners?
It's the three sided shapes we need.
The distinction of the human soul
lies within our capacity for change, effortless or effortful-
the heifer does not chew over the nature of her existence
while masticating her cud
anymore than the lion alters his way of living because
eureka! he's ashamed of all those infants he's been eating,
but man sculpts himself like a slab of reusable clay
heaving the cleaver of change unto himself, knead roll shave chop mash stab
no no no squash it all and start anew, adjust correct perfect.
His medium is nothing more than waste and regurgitated matter
or at least that's what he's been led to believe
frequently and most deprecatingly by himself.
Time compels him toward the final act of change
the snuffing out, and he looks more and more like nothing
but a meat casing full of freshly ground down organs
stretching skin thinner each day he slides by.
He experiences the changes of waning, expiring and decomposition.
The life cycle blows sulfurous smoke and laughs acrid spit into his face,
full of too late regret;
a redundancy I know, or the point of something strongly hammered.
Man was under the impression that happiness could be found in constance,
fucked by the fallacy of security and the illusion of fear.
Sometimes I tell myself
that this is the meconium of a mind
who does not always know the meaning of those three vague words
my last drink.
I open my mouth and make myself sick.