An unidentified, knee-high grain waves
In gentle winds
All those comparisons to the ocean –
I understand them now
There is a single tree
There is peace –
Serenity
A sun setting –
Or rising
Or maybe just hanging
Indefinitely
There is a pulling
A physical pain in my chest
Which leaves me pressed
Flat
Against perfectly clear glass
Trying in vain
To shatter this pane
To Break through
And be another crystal
Another chameleon diode
Taking whatever shape
I choose
I feel like this should get reblogged. But I’m also quite inappropriate sometimes.
I take solitary walks around the profound
searching for answers in mutant frogs
but severed limbs and phantom nymphs
are the only fruits that fell the grounddefeated, it laid there, tethered to itself
waiting for paradigms to shift its plates
cleaned like clocks ticking towards never
…
bring me the head of the disco king
Kerosene mouthwash
Plump cheeks plugged
With an unlit cigarette
Sandwich sign reads
“Gotta light?” or
“The end is nigh!” or simply
Advertising plights
Daily specials of
Grilled deli meats and
Massacre de jure
For every sammie sold this month
We will donate one dollar
To something or another
And you can put your name
Right <here>
Sharpie-signed-smiley smites the smallest sense of guilt
At suffering
Wake me
When the relevance returns
When the trashcans finally burn
Out
Memorandum to Humanity:
The hungry will be ground to make bread
And then there will be cake
To strive
To drive the wheels onward
Incinerating the path
Devouring the past
Black smokestacks
(chugga-chugga-chugga)
Great earthquakes and
Tiny tremors
Try to remember the
Clackity-clack-clack
Goes forward and never back
Never stops to scratch head
But rather full-steams ahead in
Predestined path
(As the passengers manage to laugh
at blurred faces streaking past
claiming that they lack
direction)
The dinner bell chimes from three cars back
And war horns sound from the engine
We’ve been all-aboard
Ever since we were born
But still –
I’m going to need
To see your ticket
strip-mine fishing hole
and edge and immediate depth
cinder block cap pulls
her down and to her death
breathing like the fishes
all ribs and painted gills
pounds and pounds of wishes
smoke rising from the stills
it’s the ignorance that kills
graceless barbarian sorts
it’s the skeletons and silt
upon the quarry floor
Licked and stuck in
Hollow bones
Country bumpkin
Quite at home
Broken meter
(measured resolve)
Robbing Peter
Raping Paul
Dedicated
To the fall
Emaciated
Run to crawl
This patchwork
Painstakingly put together
Diligent stitching through (skin)
And through (muscle)
Did you
Ever notice
The different shades?
The differing ways the
Pieces of me
Operate?
The way I favor mended bones?
My limbs of varied length
Lopsided heart buried beneath
A scavenged-rib home
Be mindful
Of my recycled
Digits
Pressed together to mimic
The words my second-hand tongue
Could never form
Eyes of different shades
Inhabiting a face
That cringes and smiles
Simultaneously
These cobwebs on my hands and
The deep impressions where I stand
Speak volumes -
Conveniently
Lately it seems it’s been hard for me
To properly express my concerns
I just can’t find the words -
These chains are starting to hurt
The shackle-rubs burn and I’ve been patiently waiting my turn
To express my grievances
Address my demons
As if I believed in them
Or had a chance at defeating them
I’ve been hanging by thread
that’s been starting to bare.
I’ve been living in the shadows
of men that were never there.
I’ve been breathing borrowed air.
They say tomorrow’s never promised -
So why should I bother to care?
Purpose is an illusion
A necessary point of reference to justify our confusion.
To nullify an institution
based upon a premise of individual restitution.
You sing like an angel
Not due to the tone of your voice
But your ability to rejoice
In the face of days of
Limited song
You sing like an angel
Whenever you sing at all
She whispered
“You are a good man.”
And I cried
The moments before 5am taste deceptively like ambition
And these fine garments feel
Remarkably like armor –
But I can tell you from experience
The world spins no faster at 4:48 in the morning
Than it does at five in the evening
And these dyed rags
Are not bullet,
knife,
or judgment proof.
The cornstalks come and go with each passing season -
This was a part of my life as real to me as the setting sun and
And the feeling of a winter just long enough
To make you forget the feeling of warmth.
I became a man on roads and
not streets -
Tar and pebble and not concrete
In the council of whispering trees that taught me to not speak
Unless spoken to -
I became a man by learning to pick up the pieces of a woman
I didn’t even understand was broken
I learned early on that sometimes people break down and get scared
And sometimes that scares you
And all of that’s perfectly fine is small doses but -
Collapse was a drug who’s bitter sting was too familiar to me
Familiar as the rising and the falling
Of those cornstalks.
All it takes it a violent tilling from a screaming machine breathing smoke
To wash the stink of winter from the soil
After the months of its shameless ravaging
People, I’ve been told
Are made of dirt
The bottom comes hard
It releases you new or it hangs on to you and
Neither of those things are fine at all
My father’s arms are the color of clay
They displayed scars that preclude his need for tattoos and
I can remember seeing him sweat dirt
The corn grows and dies with the season
Green withers to brown so quickly
And the combines are loud
Their lights penetrate august nights and sometimes
I swear
I can hear them coming
Typewriter freestyle
