Northern Exposure

You talked about bones
and I chewed a hole in my cheek,
bit my tongue in the process.
Yet I'm left to be
the one doing all the talking.
I won't lie to the kids.

The Weight

Yesterday's poems
and static.
Each word trapped the dark
in this empty cup
and you won't wait
for the sun.
Keep picturing it.
I want you to lose your nerve.

The Future (II)

Eventually:
concepts beyond our current reach.
We write letters never to be sent
and even reread, intrusive.
And we fail.
What little we have;
little we learn.
There isn't supposed to be an ending.
Even so, you did it wrong.


I failed.


The stars are quiet tonight.
You are the ringing in my ears.

The Future (I)

Right now


I have this
ache
between
my eyes


and


I think
(soon)
it will
be


empty.

Crookers

The pinkish hippos spouted on about
the elephants they used to be, back when
occupying barren corners held all the Appeal.
And the Fear of acquiring my own superfluities
nodded my head and made damnsure
my back was against every vacant crook.

Incognito

Lacking my better half, navigation has begun.
Admittedly, I take aim at any peril given
the circumstances I’ve conjured, however this
dragging tempo, half speed deemed as sufficient.
Temporarily faulty metro-tones hit
the back of my neck in time, snake tongue teases.
Even when alone there are Marlons, so I presupposed
interim exceptions and began hissing too.
Time played out as though canvas and every
story was told through an eye or two,
some more blurry than others.
Who’d have thought elevens would serve
as the dearest of friends tonight?

Kids

Manual labor;
planting dreams in barren fields.
Moving mouths to say what
you’re thinking, and realizing you
don’t like speaking your mind.
Here’s where you pick the dirt
from beneath your fingernails
and deny any semblance of effort.

No Shit, Sherlock

I’m not doing this right.

Autobot

Parched (read: starved for attention)
voice box fractures.
Prodding lights reveal early introversion,
eyes pick up the slack.

Puff Piece (II)

Don’t hold your breath for me.
I can see we both have our hands full and
yeah, we could wait and see.
If memory serves we’ll scour anyway.
Highs lows, around/between/under pinky toes.
My posture is more of a slump,
declarations like pauses
but yeah you should wait and see.
I already said it.
Maybe I’m just amazed-mazed.
I kind of want to wait and see.

S/T/E/R/E/O

Static.
Frequencies staring into my demi-soul. And then
that song came on.
Cued reality with bum/bum/be/dum.
I couldn’t tell you a single word, but
they had to have heard the news.
Shamelessly rooting for you.
Like I was taking what I wanted…

Loq

I spy the Lights Out queen.
She sits like a lady/
so I just assumed the rest.
Eyes like cage dances/
sing flames far as/
pheromones cease decree.
I can tell you right now/
she should have given up/
on vocal chords hours ago.

Dinner Date

Wiped, pristine plate smiles
not letting them stack up,
always willing to polish.
Things like that extra mile.
I opt to cut clean cloth ties and
see only my missed opportunities
for conversational niceties.
Resting on shoulders, our meal has chilled.
Checks brought, promptly
tossed over the right with
less polite salt companions.
Eyes bigger than the general pensive
and my stomach tells me
I’m going to need a while to let this settle.

Puff Piece (I)

What insanity.
Guilt dries my gums until only the obvious remains.
We truss tepid treaties and know full well
what we’ll never revisit. Too tight and this
pen always betrays paper-deep, all I’m left with
is another tally-tied lie in full black and white.
All too readily I tendered any semblance of colour.
Left alone, my bare bones prepare for salvage.
Optimism at arm’s length and still nowhere in sight.
What insanity.

Formidable Foes

Slow rise and fall
lungs tumble, strategically
accept smokescreen defeat.
Less impulsive. So polite.
Decline to meet gazes
producing such tails.
Present tense cool
shyly eyes notable
identity compromise;
exhaling future allies.
Now eyes dead deep
from the inside.
Wasted wheels turn,
reputation acquired.
Oh my lungs, I’ve become
a detriment to love.

Small Steps

Back to the Headlights.
Oh no, I had a thought
backed by no feeling and
even so, I can’t help but relate
more than I’d care to admit.
Preparing gum lines for lies,
stretching lips to match.
Here come my sweet talk
prime your ears.

Mistress, Part II

Suffer for repetition polite perpetrator.
Can’t even hear myself fucking think
over the blaring mistakes I’m making
these days. Better half says not to bother.
We try not to like these bitter things, but
depravity plays for keeps and it seems
I’m always wrong.
Interlude leads to bridges drawing blanks
and I was never one to critique art.
Just burn anything in sight.

Mistress, Part I

Hopping westbound trains toward
easy solutions but I still find familiar
faces painted on my eyelids.
Best dressed gazes catch my shadow’s
coattail enmities reading only
you, her.
Yet I’m still hungry.
Now warned of leading lines and
the plot I just wait
for something to go wrong,
flee a scene or two.

d34lbr34k3r

And why does her gawd let
her play these games?
Frequently hollowing out
each hastily crafted word
just to prove she could.
Left with shells and no context,
we’ll rally those in need of
wide-eyed sunsets.
And make them blink just in time.
Initiative back breakings,
the deal breaker.

Twiddling Thumbs

Graphic.
Art taped to the inside of
my slightly slowing eyelids
cast shadows on clocks; illuminating
time left to kill.
Hesitantly, I believed everything
he told about the truths of hell.
Remember to feel.
I lied until even I believed me.
Truth and feeling intertwined in
mounting messes on my floor, and
thus far I still don’t see the connection…
I remembered to remember but
forgot to feel, and all I can hear
is Ben ringing in my ears
because everyone knows that
God Loves A Challenge.

Second Chances

Broken lungs
and on the way back down
heart thought to say so.
Stuck on repeat or so it seems
but I’d never admit a difference.
Captivation was key in transforming
a we, or us, or both if you must.
And I think I do.
Hold your tongue until everyone is seated,
arrangements completed, and
dreams seized until they’re needed.
Not entirely sure when that’ll be,
you turn to me and doubt the belief
that never is a state of mind.
In time, my little temper trap;
this world? Yours and mine.

Aiming to Please

My mouth is full.
Spitting speakeasys
followed by soul compression
inhibitions; I swear my eyes
are open, blinking baby butterfly
kisses but sending too high
and now she thinks I’m
only aiming to please.
In high demand my insights align,
sink back down, and meet the grind:
skeletons left on her path roadside.


Noteworthy new lows.

Put My Head Down and Go

Guilty pleasures, justified.
She finds comfort in my
shoulder shrug lullabies.
Wait for the drop.
Heads and beats fall
until they hang on knees,
three stories at least.
Her little pretty pleases
hesitate, almost to a flaw.
Finds common sense trifling
as she pries trepid jaw off
my devastated floor.
Words don’t dare trek
toward my morbid eligibility.

Monochrome

We’re only rhythms:
breaths expressed spent compressed
for future syllabic vivacities.
Monochrome.
But look how far we’ve come,
glance right to over the shoulder
circumstantial sighs while
over to the left accrued tongues tied
neatly knotted charted plotted.
And what’s become?
My speech as dull as
everyone’s thoughts:
running drain drills.
At least my head’s still spinning,
axis askew.
Oh, and Hallelu! for carbonation rejuvenation
(saving souls from sanity.)
Keep cloudy between my ears friend,
or foe. Phantom perceptions never know.

Dodger

Eardrums clanked kitchen cutlery
whisking words to sisters
like they had aspirations.
Oh, sit still or Madam Im adaM
will find someone who will.
I swear I’m on fire this time.
Prefer risk of repetition?
Tell your friends’ friends.
Unexpected plot twist.

Plain Sight

Plans left in plain sight,
law applies.
Knowing what was to come
I jumped. Spun twice.
And held my breath with both hands.
Eyes slammed tight,
I exhaled empathy.
But she couldn’t see either.
And as my empathy zeroed in
her sympathetic strategy
took effect, and I was gone.

Particles In Motion

So I’ve been lying,
stretching my teeth.
Seems to be a
wolf in sheep’s clothing
specialty.
Sinking claws deep
makes it all too easy.
And I do.
Smooth talker ‘til
I lose my jaw along with
words that circle drains
situated in my lungs.
Oh hell,
I only take your breath away.

Carnivore

What to say, I intra-think.
These words I deem,
ill-fitting, to say the least.
I’m dire and grim, and
maybe quick with wit.
Conniptions.

Childish

There’s blood on my hands:
monosyllabic confessions.
Let my common reactor
refer to her by name
while I skewed the meaning
of songs I hum.
It’s an ongoing process,
throwing civility out the window.

Lover Boy

Neck cricked back and
out the door, ready to strike.
Confirming unhinged sins
with heart string chords
in Eb major. Satisfaction
stole my breathe as
you acknowledged I was on fire.
Credits rolling, tight
like eyelids.
Shotty articulation left me slightly
confused, but bewildered all the same.

Yum

Words rub lips raw upon exit,
but I have to keep singing.
Every point is proving moot
but I still find comfort in
reaffirming what little sense I have.
I remember when every
thought had a process and
every process had meaning.
But then again, my memory
is who I used to be.

Jack, My Friend

Thinking is a feeling I can't quite place,

and he puts me to sleep once the sun

hits my face.

Stifling my swing, blurring,

he says I just need some time.

But with our staring contests

he always forgets, and blinks

when she catches his eye.

And if fingers go for a walk, tonight

I won't be talking,

just trying to find my feet.

Soda, popped

Fizzled, bubbles still tickle my nose though.
Can’t help but think of you,
damn my creativity and affinity for
love.

Formulaic

Feeling worn on rolled up sleeves and
excuses coating tip of tongue idioms.
Paint on a scowl,
for old time’s sake?
Say you’d never leave but
blood runs through this pen
like ink all too ready to grieve.
Poised, geared up to dart,
bob and weave between the trees
that still stand as this season
opts for an exit too.
Hesitantly so, and yet
still won’t leave me alone.

Five

I think I was waiting for you.
I think I thought
you were worth waiting for.
And you are.
Anything in the light I’ve
painted you in
is worth waiting for.
Even if just for lessons learned
sake.
My once bulletproof thinking
presented itself for closure’s sake
and you were the first thing
to hop off my chest;
impenetrable as ever.

Quiet Type (8/9 Criteria)

I dance.
Turning, swirling everything
off my shoulders.
I dance until
I don't know I'm real.
They cry.
When I wake
I'm still dancing, shaking.
Everyday I dance my
lungs expand a little more,
tongue swells.
Tap my foot to Billy
singing my anthem.
Back against the wall and
partner of choice,
capital M-E. Damn near silent.
But I know I can dance.

Telepwn

Freedom rings!
in the form of
a new number.
Selective solidarity.
Better yet,
selective amity.

Two-Day Lament Allowance

Almost like I
asked in advance
she left me looking
a little less like myself
and two days from now
I’ll start to see the sting.
No time to recover,
nomadic hunches
deemed this land barren
and I’m on the move again.
I’m keeping a running tally.

Blessings

I think I’m taking knees,
counting all my blessings.
One, two.
For awhile I thought there was
one, two, and you.
And it sounded so astonishing
when you said it, but
the same words breached my
firmer tone and suddenly
didn’t mean anything.
So today I counted all my blessings:
one, two.
And I used to have you too.

Momentary

I’ll do better.
Build base back into
depths of pasts
I buried for Some Reason.
Wake up five years later,
better yet,
wake up at all.
Waiting on the implication
replaces faltering reverie.
Ho hums.
And each breath weighs
ten tons and four tongues
all wag at the thought:
I’ll do better.

Urban

Calling out for

offbeat soapbox socks

but still kicking it with

sufficed to say phrases

drawn out from tailpipe

tongue symphonies.

Words leave grit.

San Diego

Oh time’s growing old
watching the way she walks,
away. Let’s blacken our eyes and
black out our minds and
forget we ever even tried.
So breaking up and breaking out,
maybe even breaking down
but only on the inside,
here’s to take two.
And if that fails
take two of take two cos
anything more seems desperate.
Yeah, like we're keeping it classy.

The Feeling's Mutual

She thought she knew me
based on crooks in my back
but I beg your pardon madam
I’ve always been this hardened and
I think I at least warrant
a second look.
From one song bird to another
I’m bridging lungs together and
maybe even humming,
but not likely.
I’ll hold my one tongue, two tongue,
three tongue, four,
but anything more and
it might merit discourse.
To be safe I’ll stop at three.
I can’t help but laugh every time
she thinks she knows me.

This Is Why (We Fight)

Jaws ajar, like collecting falling stars.
And they’re always falling.
Someone else’s dream
diminishing on my tongue.
Everything’s been said.
My eyes are more than mirrors
this time, one time.
Reflections, recklessly stitching
assumed seams projecting
their own means.
Still the words aren’t right.
But I’ve already said them all.
Whose disengaged lips
sanctioned my star to fall?

Formal Invitations

Slanderous by nature, and oh.
Yeah, she fell in love again.
I have no title to scratch away yet,
too easy a target.
Repetition maps out
predictable lapses in my
cerebral awareness.
And oh.
Yeah, she rains to rust my
lead pipe dream fantasies.
Sixth time charms and
critics believe me, even
praise my soon to be
ship wreck policies.
Yeah, pioneering, I'm sure.

Count to Forty-Eight

Suddenly, tangible.
Solitaire from here on.
Feels like
lost all sentiment.
It’s an ode to
how you know it should:
seeping. Finding holes to fill
with nothing in particular.
Snake tongues.
Prying others eyes,
no sleep tonight.
They’ll hiss and cry,
leave flowers in their place.
More empty than when they arrived
each stumble to remnants.