Under Handed

I don't recognize the meat beneath me.
Far away,
Larger than I remember.
Are these my hands?
Something about the colour.
Egyptian and scarred
There is no comfort of constant
In this absence of familiar.

Famine's Family

Holding hands across this abyss.
I can almost feel what I am saying.
Heels click into place.
Eyes lose focus.
Not much in the way of laughter,
Besides the mocking disbelief.
A few degrees shy of happiness.
Nothing is waiting on the other side.
The pasture you seek
Was hit hard by the famine of imagination.

Stagnant

No one knows,
Or cares,
What I do,
Or when I do it.
So long as my reach stays local.
So long as my ambition remains,
Stagnant.

Tested

We spent hours saying nothing.
Only sitting in the dark.

A phantom howl among the wind.
The gentle barking of your heart.

The word, upon which all was waiting,
I softly tightened up the screws.

A subtle timbre in the talking.
I thought you hadn't heard the news.

I pull my jacket closer.
My face, a blur of lines.

Can't imagine all the work.
To act like everything was fine.

Something swept up in the sadness.
Best intentions blown around.

Now a question with no answer.
I stare harder at the ground.

cocoon

I pull the covers closer.
Tighter than the lids of my wincing eyes.
Tight enough to keep the air from trespassing.
Here in this fabric shelter I wait.
For what?
A bell to toll in the gloom?
The waning winds of winter?
No matter how long I hide here in,
I cannot change into a butterfly.

Stalk or be Stalked

I am stockpiling every look you gave me.
Good or bad or unintended.
All the same.
Be it all I am interested in,
And maybe more.
You are every thing I want,
And I will never know you.
My summation might be a complete misstep,
But it affords some comfort.
A slight reprise from this despicable life.
Now, as I torture myself over the past,
My what ifs keep my hand away from the knife.

Modern Meta-Blindness

You stockpile your faults around you.
Like self propelled life preservers,
In an ocean of kerosine and napalm
As long as you hold the fuse
There is no effect on you.
Oblivious, it seems, to the truth of things.
You use your misdoings as a weapon,
To weaken the knees of all you see.
And yet,
When observations are made,
From foe and friend alike,
You burn deep into the night.

The Upender

Can we please just stop pretending,
That this is anything but,
A rest and relaxation generation?

Like some festering wound,
It would heal just fine,
If the bitch would just stop tonguing it.

I need to check under every brick,
and flip each cobblestone that built this road,
Till I find the scorpion hiding with my name on it's poison.

In Difference

These days are passing like flashes.

Lights among the darkness.

More like than not alike.

Barely even see the changes,

With ever blurring lines.

Each day follows with a waiting night.

Same place.

Same road.

Same move.

Same fight.

Creative Cultist

Constantly searching
for plot holes in your sermon.

Dead oaths pass through lips dead quick.
The mythic dawn mystery rises against insatiable ships.

Do you have more questions?
Or would you like to talk business?

You parade as a museum but,
Really,
What is this?

"We hold the fate of the world!"
So says the cultist.

Partners

Is it pride that keeps me from lying?

In truth we crumble and fall further,

Widening the chasm with each honest answer.

I could choose to be,

The me you think I am,

The personality you expect.

Each time the mask is lowered,

And the truth is revealed,

The earth swells,

The bow breaks,

And the mist engulfs me.

I should have known it was destined for destruction,

As soon as the word "worshiped" was uttered.

What am I fighting for?

What am I even fighting for?
After all, this all dissolves.
Not a thing we do will last.
When the heat of it disappears,
In the frozen lock of space and time.
I fight so I might not have to fight later,
But in the cosmic eye I'm wasting time.
The planet will devour all we do and all we try.
Even if we leave, the comic clock unwinds.
Infinite frustration over finite gains.
The smartest thing my father did was die.

The smartest thing my father did was die.
This is not a story of triumph.
Our's is the story of defeat.
We will break the world until we break ourselves.

Interview with a Outcast

"I see myself dead in five years."
A simple answer,
To a stupid question.
Who even answers that one honestly?
"Follow that ambulance.
I want to see carnage!"
Then the pale and awestruck response begins.
Nearness brings to light frailness.
Bound by fear of failings.
"I know how strangers see me."
Fleeting interests.
Discounted at perceived disrespect.
Fear the mirror in the eyes across this distance.

Serpent's March

The serpents are circling,
In hope of their prey.
Be drowned by intentions,
The hope of the day.
Broken the alter.
Ashes away.
Open is falling,
Falling,
Falling,
Falling away.

Get lost in the dawn break,
With nothing to pay.
Pushing the fallback.
Feeling the haze.
Nearing a billion,
Right into the fray.
Nothing to stop your falling,
Despite what they say.

Language barrier

I wish that I could understand them.
So alike,
In shallow sense.
Yet, aeons between the hunching hopes
and myself.
The action of this creature,
So intuitive.
Impulsive.
Far below the surface of thought.
Yet, somehow it continues.
and seems to increase by the day.

Carded

I'm not even a drop of water,
In this ocean of life
We call it a slaughter.
Doting Zoe's derelict daughter.
Like I was blind,
Choosing loaded barrels in the darkest of nights.
You said I knife fight right.
I was left with my word against mine.
Tight-lipped the caged canopy
Shot glasses in the pantomime.
I won't be surprised when I find,
There is a zero percent chance the last dance in mine.

Fast Fists

Fingers grip.
Sweat drips.
If only Mom could see me now.

Tight lipped,
The welcome slip,
Ignore the creases of my brow.

You did miss,
The pre-bud nips.
Now surpassing 5000!

Long Drive

Just sit there
In that chair
It is not very fair,
Now that you are more consciously aware.
But another eighteen hours and we will be there.

Potholes like plot holes
On a road to some nemesis
Scary?
Yes.
But it is a hell of a lot better than when we precisely hold hands.

Hi there!

Winding down this alley
Dark and menacing
I can scarcely think of an excuse
To avoid this encounter
Pensive and merciless
Worth every second of stalking
The blade strikes true
A new home in me found.

Pensive

Picture perfect pocket
Preemptive purification
Petrified
Piece by piece
One per person
A pretty perspective
This playable persona
Practical
Perpetual perturbation
Please prepare for pretense
With prompt prostrating

The slow deterioration of joy

I am no longer at liberty
The solution is distance
To be sure
But the yearning is unbearable
How did it get to be like this
Such a pain
At arms length or closer
there is no safe distance
Near or far
To salvage this happiness

Afflicted by now

All is distorted through the lens of time
We make such a fuss over how we see things now
We can't stand things going as they wish
We hold no hope for the future
Not while the past is so heavy on our minds

Work

I stare at these stairs
Looking back at me
Deceived and incomplete
Force my body against gravity
Sadly succumb to depravity
With a crooked grin
You can't write drama this badly
Growing gray and weeping gently
Progress these crimes and buy your freedom

Blood Clot

The library became something that we synthesize.
Televised in some sad semblance,
You could honestly describe as "modernized"
Wide-eyed, grand attempts at getting a
Customized,
Annotated,
Nothing.
A corpse, not remotely resemblant, remains.

Can you bury a million people for the taste of what their fed?
Worship in a way that dulls the head.
I don't care who made it,
We're all lying in this bed.

Living in a rough draft culture designed to hypnotize.
We become a distant memory of life,
Now sterilized.
Paralyzed with panoramic scenery from every part of the world
Except,
Our own.
Not a single face is recognizable on this display.

Can't complain though,
So long as they rob you of the words you'd use to do so.
Even when we lack the language,
The feeling is welling up.
Somewhere between hysteria and panic:
Reprise.

We are the children of a system that became it's own disguise.

Mortality

I found a corpse today
In the garden with a rake
Due to decomposition rate
I could not determine gender or age
Judging from how the body lay
It seemed they passed with little pain
The sun sure had it's way
Six small legs had curled away
All the same
I had to contemplate
Life,
And death,
And pain.

Forget-Me-Not

Time may forget me here
But these solid walls will press on
Refusing to crumble
As I have crumbled
As have you.
The soft and eloquent things
Slowly pressed into bitter jelly.
With the telescope of infinity
we see.

I am nothing that was not before
Nor will I be ever more.

Season of Dreams

Pacing these heavy corridors
Thoughts running adjacent
Abstract and active
There is  a certain flow to things
I haven't found it yet
There is a resonating timbre
This place vibrates beyond my dreams

Reflections

Formica and false marble
Particle board and blood stains
This rough structure could barely stand a heavy breeze.

Chipped rubber liners
Scratches score each surface
Florescent reflections reveal my face in these.

Surprise

Somewhere along the line
I did not get notified.
Lost in communication
Or just ignored.
These vital instructions got swept up,
Under so many carpets they rest.
I suppose I'll never learn.
Oh, to be the wasted words:
A feeling often overlooked and unintended.
We know the way to fail in not alone inaction.
Something as a torrid swell
Singular I feel the broad side.
Within it a comfort I did not expect.

Of Holding

Every time I travel,
I seem to have found more to bear.
The pocket space is stagnant,
But my inventory is exploding.
Lest I be empty handed it keeps coming.
Perhaps I can find refuge in the cubby I am carving.
Spoons are slow going in this cave.
There is light in and around this space.
I can see no end to the suffering.
Wherefore am I unbroken?
Hopeless.
I feel the waves of nausea rising.
My blood stream reluctantly pumping what it can.
A dizzy spell.
All sin, the empty swell.
Where did the days go?
Why is it so hard to be still?
By the second,
The lines of this fragile plot are growing whiter.
There will be cracking and bleeding at the seams.
The hooks cannot be kept from catching.
The time will pass regardless.