The Fraud (Anything)

I’m stilling fighting.
This time with myself instead of
for your guarded heart and chain link mind.
I wish it was real.
I wish I could send this way I feel away,
not have every thought echo in my head.
What if we were all that mattered?
Sometimes I would let my words settle
to sift through later,
and they were all that mattered because
when it came down to it we were all talk.
And even so, I wanted to be perfect for you.
I wish you didn’t still haunt my stars at night,
or maybe that I haunted yours.
Nobody said it would be easy, but
it’s supposed to be worth the war
and I fought damn hard just to end up
back where I started,
when all the while we could have been in love.

Strides

The blue birds would rather

sing the greens, and not for me.

Sometimes each note is a poem

escaping the depths of secrets

they swore they'd keep from me.

Vulgar vultures.

I'm sure they're catching wind of my

mind's complicated extrapolation,

but I've heard they're harmless anyway.

Aren't we something like natural enemies?

The Internet

I'm singing in my sleep again.

Dropping dead while I'm

dropping jaws, my audience

just isn't static enough to

hang around my neck.

Do I have a reputation yet?

I can only keep your heart

beating til my throat gives out.

It must be close to

a thousand years now,

and I found trouble first.

Where'd you leave the getaway car?

All this living in sin

is getting to my head.

VeggieTales

You’re hard
like apple cores,
I don’t want to
figure out just how far
this can go.
No one likes the seeds

Seasonal Offender

Wicked smiles decapitating the little

dancing fingertips left in the cold.

No lessons are learned when winter coats

are clever. Singing along with the wind

something finally sinks. All the windows

were kicked in and back out. Sign language.

Get the party off the mantelpiece,

how unspecific. It must be love.

Fame

You're only a four letter word.

I dropped a hint for our audience

seemingly off-hand so you wouldn't notice.

Empty pockets can't buy your heart, and

the well's a little on the shallow side these days.

Do you remember when I told you

I would never lie? How ironic right.

Having chased down your shadow,

I see it was you all along.

Oh boy, where do I start?

My weatherman's a fascist.

Leitmotif

Marching as the drummer
of our recklessly assembled fairy tale,
I'm off half a beat.
My charisma let it pass,
though Peter doesn't seem too fond
of this calling card percussionist
I've become.
I'm switching to the French Horn,
in too much of a hurry to chew.
But boys like him are not afraid
of stomach aches.
If you listen closely you can hear
my oboe abdomen blues.

Uncles

Calling our names backward and

leaving nothing to the imagination

digital eyes pry past our insides

stealing your breath in the process.

Why did you ask why I ask

so many questions

if you were just going to dance

on my answers like feedback?

Spitting tongues at those red eyes.

We'll blink like we have a purpose tonight,

no dreams for analog deceptions.

Half Full

Blessed my lips with something like scandal

as I explored what was left of her human vessel.

She was plenty empty but her implicit objectives

were too good to abscond to probability, or Canada.

Left me feeling a specter; what a dark assignment

she turned out to be. My nubile apprentice,

I just wanted to see your insides

maybe fill them a quarter or so.

Combustible

Damaged goods,

never taking it easy

on his readers.

Slipping hints of

discontent through language;

still searching for that

first time high.

If nothing else, he's

proof of blackened wombs

and malignancy.