August again

My heart is a well running dry

My lungs, two bricks

I breathe and they crumble

I search for the words and

They are clumsy

I stumble and

trip

Over a tongue that’s too quick

for

A brain that is burnt out and foggy

And I spiral in a cyclical fashion

A typhoon of hopes and regret

And I close my eyes

But I don’t sleep

And my brain swells

And the fog clears

And retrospection bombards my nerves

Shaky and scared

Tired and angry

I draw out my sword and I drive it

Split it right though the center of my throat and

I am divided at the crossroads of

What parts of myself to pick up

What parts of myself, left to rot

So I spit out my tongue and set fire

And

Finally

there is a silence

Finally

There is a comfort

in the spilling of my guts

And from the flames I pick up my heart

Ashen like a Phoenix

But the char feels soft

The heat, alive

And I close my eyes

And I sleep.

A parking lot in August

Calm your pretty head he tells me as he rests his hands on the swarm

And I wonder, can he feel them?

The whirring of my thoughts

The thundering of my storm

I sink into the concrete

His warmth and the gravel consumes me

And I am split between

weighed down and weightless

Blooming yet blossom-less

Calm your pretty head he tells me as he wraps me in his arms

And I wonder, can he see me?

The clutter in my heart

The broken bits of bone

The map of battle scars drawn

From the war within my soul

Calm your pretty head he tells me as he settles my anxious hands

And my heart against my battered ribs thumps and crashes

Thumps and crashes

And I wonder, does he understand?

The hope that terrifies me

The love that scratches at my chest

The light now lit I had so long kept dim

Just calm your pretty head he tells me

and I am calm.

 

Tigers claw

I hang my love on a tigers claw and

Perforated it swells, then empties

My heart, bloated like my gut

Growls and

Devours

I split open my chest and try to cultivate something more than

this black hole in my bittered ribs

but

diseased with incurable change

will I ever really bloom?

the steady shift of seasonal affection

the scabbing of an old wound ripping off

The shadow of

a memory

fragmented and dividing

but,

the thread is in my hand

I am my own undoing

Explosions

 

Well balanced and composed I toe the edge of a precipice

with a full chest

unblinking I stare into the abyss

and the abyss says nothing back

but an echo of a laugh

rings clearly and

I sway as the ground crumbles beneath me.

An explosion of blood and stone escapes my throat

and I am floating

lifted above the scape of

The shards that pierce my skin

The love that ebbs and flows

The quiet

The darkness

The pulse

The empty little space inside my chest

It all explodes.

 

Bitter Nails

A pot on the stove boils over

and i swallow the steam, a cleansing

I breathe the heat in through my pores

But I am weak.

I  cant seem to keep anything down

and hollow, i echo

how

I cant stand the sound of

a dish stacking dish

or a track of static

or the way my fingers stick after a long nap

dreaming of cobwebs and

long halls with no doors but

ten keys

clanging and clinging

so loud that im feeling

sick at the sound of a bell

or drunk drinking.

and im thinking that

no amount of  cotton

could possibly drown it out.

So i lay, sharing this bed with old demons and

the scratching of bitter nails down my back

or a pair of hands

multiplying, metaphorically

into a colony of wasps

stinging my skin with regrets

 

./*/;_

Pulley

It has been a year

it seems, twisting inside of me

it appears, my bones unwilling to bend

now resisting, splinter inwards

and all the things inside of me

are hushing the rush of blood

and the beat of the pulse

hushing, hissing, breathing, beating.

Confined to this tight structure, I have been re-evaluating

the length of my spine

i grip my hands on the doorway

pull to stretch out the time i have left at this height

i have a hunch as my nose hits the floor

and the smell of honey and chlorine licks my tongue

as a wave of goodness flows over me

./*./;

1.11.11.111

I have lost something.

Though what, I am unsure

But its absence
Weighs heavy

It is only in sleep I come close
It seems

naked atop an
Everest of dirty laundry
I bury myself in it

Deep in the center of stink

And i fold
But rouse unfolded
unwilling and unclean

So now I carry with me a locked box
As I travel through each day
In hopes that if I find it

I may catch it, Keep it safe.

For it was surely in my carelessness
I let it
(so silently)
slip away.

And I wonder,

is this me now?

Is the face I see
Who I am
Or who I should be
who I am
Or who I could be
who I am
Or who

I am
a constant circle
On a one way street

I am
a dog with a bone
But no teeth

Like a dancer with two left feet,
I am a writer with two left tongues

The only words I manage
drown amidst
Four hundred blank pages
One freshly cracked spine
Two bottles
Twelve cigarettes and
Nothing but
Smudges and
ink crossed out

So
un inspired i borrow from
unfinished lines
i had once left behind

but now even they are lazy, for they have lost their point.

Though, I never did flow smoothly (As i so tenderly recall)

Still
My inability to progress in a straight line
Is my cage
in which, I do not sing.

But
scratch
At the bottom

And Attempt to dig free.

The root of a dead tree

I split open

count the rings of years accumulated

whittling down the layers of false self

so that i may become closer to REAL

 

I spoke with wildflowers as they called out to me

their pain is a burden i carry

like a sword cured of the heaviest stone

and the degree to which i am bending

is so enormous

I can  feel the notches in my floor boards

and I am haunted.

 

For the sway of my spine and skin of their pine reminds me

of a dead tree that stood

in an empty field

each day a lone falcon
sat atop its highest branch

and watched closely as I passed.

 

But today they cut it down.

I have not seen him since.

 

and likes its branches I am broken.

and i am angry that it’s gone.

 

 

Sometimes I sleep and it follows me

sometimes i lay awake and it comforts me

sometimes i dream and there is nothing

Plume

I wish I could go back

there

to my perfect teeth and D tits.

scar less skin and

un tethered lips

go back there and tell myself no

don’t do it

keep your light

don’t try it

for the years a constant fight

and there is no getting up,

no glory hit

just blood in your mouth and blackouts

bathroom floors and

free never really means free

how many  preferred your body

to money

how many

robbed you then took you

Dont Go up into that room I would tell myself

Go home and sleep and remember

how beautiful it is to dream

and not

the nightmares of in betweens

hallucinating

from lack of sleep and nothing to eat

piece of toast, throw it up

take a grape, and burn your throat

numb it with

ice, or blow or who cares

I  don’t know

gotta hold your head back  to make sure

it doesn’t flow

back down and out

through the hole

burnt in your nose.