self portrait

i was painting your picture,
but it turned out to be myself.

get me out of here
all the faces are the same

i'll swallow sand
i'll swallow snow

just get me out of here.

melodramatic eyes

i rise with the world on five puffy-eyed hours.

is it bleakness that mutes the taste of the banana, is it bleakness that encourages ambiguity of the bonsai's existence?

i'm melodramatic.
i smile.

they still paint. the outcome gets worse. in the distance i see the last walk through this strangely bare passageway.
and i see irony begging me to a diferent place that has five or ten more of these cold corridors.

different at first.

but at the end of each stride, the same.

i'm melodramatic.
i smile.

the solar panel failed to make it through the weekend. it couldn't get the paperwork done.

back to the blinding black basement, far far from the sun.

at least the sun sucker doesn't have feelings.

i'm melodramatic.
i smile.

the leaves are turning, sick with fall.

i eat a cookie and my fortune tells me

'you will have a chance soon
to make a profitable transaction.'

i guess i'll buy a lottery ticket.

crack

i went to pick
a hair off your
face
but
found it was
a crack.

and you crumbled.
there,
in my bed.

i vacuumed you up.
and took you
outside.

i gave you
to the vultures
to season their dead.

sunk & salvaged

my mind sometimes wanders
into darkness
and drinks deep
from sorrows
once thought
forgotten.

black-out sorrows
sunk and salvaged.

this cycle
will not end.

for my mind
is a circle.

but so exists the sun.

the blue ribbon

but the ground
packed hard
the sun
surprisingly hot.

breaths turn to foam.
and we will all
give up.

our triumph
will sink to the
bottom
of the souls
we have lost.

eyes close.
the blue ribbon
frays.

i want to leave.

yelling to the clock
will only pass time
quicker,
and these splinters
in our eyes
will only sink deeper.

don't drink the water
here, everyone
is drowning.
but that's what
they want-
not fresh air.

fuck. this.

college

I have resigned
to the fact that
I am wasting my time.
college is a joke.
a bad joke that
my uncle tells
every time
he sees me.
I'm paying
thousands
thousands
for what?
for a piece of paper
signed
by a woman
I hate.
for a job
behind
a counter?
fuck
that.
I won't do it.
I am better than that.
I am better than you.
I am better than myself.
I won't do it.

interrupted dreams

dreams of an old lover
already wearing the
face of a stranger.

a hen better than my own
licks my face and wags her tail.

it was almost a bad dream
but you woke me with
your vomiting.

again.

and again.

i breath in ink
and wish it were over.
i am tired.
and worried.
and think of driving
to the hospital
only to fall asleep.
in this tiny bed
made for one,
but sleeps two.

it stops.
but baby chickens
do not rest.
not in the light of the sun.

i will eat it in my sleep.
when i am a weasel
or a dog.

spring

mist from a melodramatic sky
prickles my skin.
the song birds don't sing,
but bitch about nest building
for the eleventh season
and threaten flight into windows.

dogs howl at noises they
only hear in their heads,
and the squirrels leave
for their hatred
of dog shit smell.

by the end of earth's three month rotation
we will sigh relief.
the god damned babies
have finally shut up.
their cuteness morphed
into adolescent awkwardness.

we'll be alone again.
in silence...
until we break it
with sound of desperate
fucking.

shit.
more babies.

the long summer days grow longer.

migration

Children run with their scaly chick feet
across the grass of spring.
laughter ensues the idea of
living in the clouds.
my cloud will be a panda,
and yours some desert heartthrob.
tiny sailboats cross oceans of paper.
sometimes pink.
sometimes orange.
sometimes green.
the places we have been are fantastic,
though we have only traveled once.
spring begins the real start to the new year.
and this year we prepare for migration.

vultures

standing wrinkles leak
stale cigarette smoke.
eyes sunk so deep
in their sockets
they stare at tar polluted vessels.

the sun dries our hides
and flies spill from our mouths
in plumes of greasy vapors.

vultures sit on our shoulders
and pick at dead flakes of skin.
they sit, voids without souls,
and they wheeze
with every shallow breath.
waiting for the next set
of tar shot eyes
to roll over, into the dust.

the room

The floor bleeds with every wet, passing day. Mildew spores take root in the mucus of sleeping noses, and the foulness bleeds into sleeping brains. Sneezes of desperate minds wake twisted, aching bodies from beds that intend to suffocate. Please sleep forever, they whisper to floating dreams. The room knows not the outside world, but fears it all the same. It fears the days when the floor feels the raping of rain, when the infection spreads, when the humans getting paid to care...don't. The room is slowly dieing, turning into itself a musty grave.

last night we told the truth

The train rattles through as it always does, my dreams of laughter and warmth along with it. They climb the lightening depths up the north road of sleep into the bright waking life, the consciousness of those words. Heavy words that have waited on your lips with a pressure that could spoil it all if set free too soon. But your eyes admitted this heaviness long ago, and the liberated syllables finally fall from your lips with an already known comfort. I felt the words inside myself, balancing on my own two lips, but afraid I may float away from you after their release, held them back to suffocate under my tongue.

good night moon.

it is january 21st.
with only one hour left.
the smoke from a long forgotten roach floods my lungs, moving as a mushroom cloud, lethargically rolling over my red interior. the way smoke does. the smoke silently tumbles down the longing lining of my esophagus and falls to my lungs, weightless, but with the just noticeable sting of delicately seared flesh.
the sky outside is a good one to be under. we lay beneath the same one, though we dream in separate beds. the moon smiles even in sleep. i smile more when you warm me, but you know that.
good night moon.