i.want.so.much. again.

again.

nowitsoundslikethis.lintlikefilmysurface..ofyourskinitsangrytexture.makesmeshiverand.recoil.likeiliketodolatelywhen its.late.too.late.i.smell.it.and.taste.it.the.air.is.stale.with.cardboard.throat.things.escaped.snores.and.random.words.i.guess.this.is.what.it.looks.like.on.the.verge.of.furious.nothingness.the.view.is.lovely.you.hang.it.out.to.dry.where.i.cant.miss.it.and.you.know.i.hate.it.just.because.i.want.it.but]cant cant cant
Cant not.
Do.

For.You.

Not now.not.ever.fuck.me.fuck.You and
Also
The weather. The desert.
Air
And principles.of punctuation.
Capitalization.of.You
Before
I.

Still.i.struggle.to.sit.still.in.spite.of.the.hours.the.pills.and.palm.trees.the.lack.of.wind.
Tonight.
On my knees
For lack of blood flow and
Why.Not
Disease
Cures
Me you.say.
Tomorrow I may sleep until you.hear.me.
Howling
Outside
Ice.in.my.lungs.and.
Fear
Freezing
My.tears.

Less likely still
Is feeling
Returning
Anytime feasible
The future. Please tell me
More Capital lettered words wait.for.me.
Patient-like. Zen.

I read that somewhere...

And to think that I was initially just so taken with the crown molding.

What a charming detail in the story we spin 
About this boy meets girl next door
And how
You.

Deserve to be capitalized
Italicized
Underlined
And loved 
In bold
Sweet cursive
Always.

I have spent too many 
Minutes
In boots
Worn so well and also so wrong
I know I still
Take solace in what few things
I've managed to carry on
And sling over my back
On this quest
A self-making wrong things 
Feel like 
Pretty alright
And all the while I walked and I 
Watched
For any signs of life
That somehow made sense to
String together
Like feathers
Tied up in 
Unkempt
Unclean
Hair I hold tightly to
In lieu of
You
Before this roof
Like a landing pad
For flying machines

Before I could 
Quit squinting into the sun 
And just sit here with you
And know that we 
Both
Know better than to spill
The cup we share and overflow it may
A surplus
Of sustenance and
Us
With caps lock on
And all the while 
When in Rome I really remember
Little anymore
About how far and long and hard
I marched 
Stubbornly seeking
The title to this 
Deed I knew of only as a 
Voyeur
Perhaps
This precious and life-begets-life 
Thing and it's everything
But
Our once
well-kept secret 
Desperate
I am to tell you of how 
You
Make sense
Inside my head we rhyme and 
I see pictures often 

More than any girl
In times like these ever should
Really-

Its cool man but do me a favor and do something today that makes u happy.

tonight
I reached out and grabbed a knee for
what
reason i cant say or care about
and i came up
with a fistful of
your heartbeats

it caught me right in the sweet
spot
my throat
swollen with all the shit and stewing

i should learn to say in a subtle way
so as not to provoke
or exacerbate perhaps like
everything else i scratch your surface
just all wrong
and just too much

with a heavy hand

always

and now as your pulse clicks question marks into unfinished sentences and
fragments
of my arguments and constant
static
like mental stolen cable channels
snow
fills my chest and i swell from some subterranean place just beyond
where i can reach
with claws and broken fingernails
always
dirty

and the left unsaid things start to
thaw
me and awaken me to some familiar awareness
i forgot to feel in recent days it seems
to the presence
the existence and persistance
of my own pulse
still keeping track of all the things i know better than to keep tabs on
for the sake of self preservation perhaps
or maybe just selfish short-sightedness and
vertigo
is what i can blame today i guess
it matters less with each second hand twitch of my life
that goes by unnoticed and unaccounted for by choice
to everything and everyone who might count for something
except this thing the size of my fist
i was always led to believe
but who really knows how big or small
and for all i know the pulse i take for granted all too often
and in too many nights like these

might not be built to last afterall
and all there is to count on
is the countless ways to keep on
your sleeve the worst of yourself
like a
badge

a sticky band-aid
and a sickly looking wound
of my own making and who am i to say

it is not normal
or natural at all
to find your life

behind your kneecap
while you sleep
at ease and

all told, it sold me on the idea of
question marks

and i will try to sleep it off tonight
like i should not have to pretend
and you
leave me wide open
exposed
and choking
on my bloated and swollen
lips
tingling from what
never did escape them today

but probably should have
saved me
from

this.

moment of truth
in its brutal
i know too well, and throw the well-rehearsed
other cheek
before it even clears the
event horizon
of my scrambled egg thing of mind.

and i don't mind if you don't mind
that things are beating and
pumping
thrusting
working hard
to keep on
not living
like we do more than we don't.

right on my sleeve
and here in my hand
your proof of you
in kneecaps
and ellipses unfinished business
do nothing good for us and i
pull back

my hand

and my heart.

Now if you're feelin' kinda low 'bout the dues you've been paying

Future's coming much too slow

And you wanna run but somehow you just keep on stayin'

Can't decide on which way to go

Yeah, yeah, yeah

I understand about indecision

But I don't care if I get behind

                                 People livin' in competition

All I want is to have my peace of mind.

Now you're climbin' to the top of the company ladder

Can't cha see there'll come a day when it won't matter

Come a day when you'll be gone

 

I understand about indecision

But I don't care if I get behind

People livin' in competition

All I want is to have my peace of mind.

Take a look ahead, take a look ahead...

Now everybody's got advice they just keep on givin'

Doesn't mean too much to me

Lot's of people out to make-believe they're livin'

Can't decide who they should be.

I understand about indecision

But I don't care if I get behind

People livin' in competition

All I want is to have my peace of mind.

Take a look ahead, take a look ahead.

Look ahead.

                                                                        Hope it doesn't take too long

   

one.  year.            

[down].

Idealist Portrait of the Champion (ENFP)


Like the other Idealists, Champions are rather rare, say two or three percent of the population, but even more than the others-
they consider intense emotional experiences as being vital to a full life.

Champions have a wide range and variety of emotions, and a great passion for novelty.

They see life as an exciting drama,

 pregnant with possibilities for both good and evil, and

they want to experience

all the meaningful events and

fascinating people

                              in the world.

The most outgoing of the Idealists, Champions often can't wait to tell others of their extraordinary

experiences.

Champions can be tireless in talking with others,

like fountains that

bubble and splash,

spilling over

their own words

 to get it all

  out.        

       

And usually this is not simple storytelling;

Champions often speak (or write)

in the hope of

revealing some truth about human experience,

or of motivating others with

their powerful

convictions.                   

Their strong drive to speak out on issues and events,

along with their boundless enthusiasm and

natural talent  with language,

makes them the most vivacious and

                    inspiring

                of all the types.

Fiercely individualistic,

Champions strive toward

a kind of      

             personal authenticity,

         and this intention

always to be themselves

is usually quite attractive

                                                  to others.

At the same time, Champions have outstanding intuitive powers

and can tell what is going on inside of others,

reading hidden emotions

and giving special significance

to words or actions.

Their attention is rarely

passive or casual.

On the contrary, Champions tend to be

             extra sensitive and alert,

always ready for emergencies,

 always on the lookout for

what's possible.

Champions are good with people and
usually have a wide range of personal relationships.

They are warm and full of energy with their friends. They are likable and at ease with colleagues, and handle their employees or students with great skill.

They are good in public and on the telephone,
and are so spontaneous and dramatic
                                                         that others love to be in their company.

Champions are positive, exuberant people,

and often their confidence in

the goodness of life

and of human nature

makes

good things

                                      happen.     

Joan Baez, Phil Donahue, Paul Robeson, Bill Moyer, Elizibeth Cady Stanton, Joeseph Campbell, Edith Wharton, Sargent Shriver, Charles Dickens, and Upton Sinclair ...are examples of Idealist Champions.

"To be loved, love."  (Si vis amari, ama.)

Ovid

Since the sink and the slip and those pills which still sit on my shelf in storage i could not bring myself to sip and then swallow without scars forming in my mind all over again i must just be crazy afterall i did hit my head rather hard and heard crack sounds like nightmare i have on nights where i curse your motives and my homelessness that time i met you i wish it was less fake and more blood that i shed impossible head wounds bleed for like too long i don't care to thank god i just know i won't feel good for who knows how long it takes the blistered scar thing i peel layers off daily to just let me forget about gramercy and you and what happened that winter and suitcases stolen from stairwells and where is karma when i was wronged and not in the wrong for once i can pinpoint the moment i knew what regret and bloodshed tastes like in large amounts when forcefed through what i must face every day in front of the sink and what stings between my eyes the place where my face lets me live like a leper sometimes i know less of what this is and more of what isn't fair either but keep telling me all about how i am needed elsewhere and that's just fine i call out but feel panic rise bile and mercury like shot through throat parts like unreal and my teeth get weaker each time i bite back the tears of shit past and taste bitter and all i passed on while i was passed out or should have been days into something like that time they found me in time but i wished they were as slow to get moving as i was and still am and

 I feel less certain about what is my fatal flaw; where and how I tripped and fell and what was the cause and what effects are still tripping me up in spite of how different the sidewalks feel beneath my sneakers here.

I will always feel at home in New York City, despite last winter when I called the Starbucks in Union Square my home, for lack of

anywhere else

that would have me and at the time
its funny how time is so fickle and useless in spite of what they tell me
i felt fine about that corner table the one by the side door that faced
what-13th street-i guess? useless alley if you ask me, really
just a buncha dumpsters and wind which makes for oddly-shaped cigarette butts
but anyway, my table was right in the drafty spot where i'd catch a random
shot
of crisp delicious metallic from whatever idiot needed coffee at that hour too
and swung that side door wide open just long enough
to take my breath away as
i suppose i can  be honest here-
the truth is this and nothing less than
the.what i can't fathom still or shake from my wrists like sticky rice
wanton won-tons
and cheap eats i liked to feast on back then in bed-stuy and bushwick alike
besides all of it still i try to find something half as good or close to
alive
as the addiction i loved to hate to miss even now in this fucking place
where i am the oddest duck around and even
my mail can't find me i'm so good at
hiding
out and what if i stood on top of one of those fucking
mountain tops
one of these useless days where i have pills and enough of
what flows just below where i can see through
veins in my feet
swollen and still
once i got to the tippy-top of the.what
i like to picture when speaking of you, and of
sin city as its better views i guess
those mountainous background images keep
me from running too hard down the hill by my house here
or staring straightintothesun like i
want to sometimes
for lack of foresight why not try
spots and blinkbackthings for the sake of
my boredom and i never liked
my eyes anyway even when they were
shot
up with
alive
and the air from outside
and my face felt like ice pops
and your cheek next to mine so close
to we're done and i'm over the best part of life and its not even
been a full year since i ate shit and had to
hang pride and
the.what
on the line to dry out for days at a time
and then all of a sudden it was the fourth of july and i might have been
better off not knowing that popping sounds outside my windowless room
on john street that night
were anything more than gunshots and dying
people every time my song changed quiet between them i'd find
room to move my feet and question why not me and answer myself silently
from every angle i just could convince my mind to bend around
i knew nothing like
alive and this is why you left me clotheslined strikethrough your old words
and also why i like to love the pages of this book i play with sometimes when
i'm high on
boredom these nights when i sleep wide eyed and think about
your hands my thighs were less than this and so was i but still
i love
i love
i love to lie still on my back and pretend that outside that the wind i can hear
howling
and mountains i see in my mind just beyond where the coyotes come down from
i hear the sky rumble just like
it did when i was awake at this time of the night in a corner in my glory but less
than free from worry and debt and destroying my face and then came flights
one-way always
scared piss out of me and panties were scarce back in those days i guess i made
messes of more than just chairs at the airport where i ran to catch my
fucking departure
from my life and all that i liked once upon a time
and every once in a while i find myself lying out loud to a stranger in his bed or
else to myself again why not
just carrying on about being on time and how i hate that type of thing and
can't find my priorities right now they might be, i reason, buried in my bag perhaps
the shoulder strap broke but that's fine i said for lack of what else and
embarrassed pack rat i felt like for that whole test of strength and vinyl failed me
like i describe to anyone who might be reading this nonsense and shit and
you
who fights the urge to bolt for the side door or else just yawn through my truth
spilling.out
like soda shaken can stuff
exploding
from somewhere unseen but felt violent with potential
and carbonated and ready
to splash the contents of your hands with what i try not to cry over more times
than i might like to consider but still
you sigh like you know better than me and i know its a long shot but
i think i've got nothing but time and whynot and its this or
just jump off the summit i can't climb
for lack of something i lost back when strong gusts
of blinding december early though back when its cold but not
so much so that toes in my best boots the ones with
holes in the soles and everywhere else from miles i walked while my classmates
knew how to save up the spare change i suppose i could not
and just blew off the steam i tightened my thighs up for what its worth
in hindsight maybe i should have just learned how to ride the
subway but ohwell is what fills me with smugness and sly little half-smiles
inside i'm sure you don't notice me not noticing you when i go there
in stories regaling you with but really i just need a reason to listen
to myself talk about this shit and run circles around history
re-written to fit what i miss most and without all the commercial interuptions
just because i control the on/off switch and this is spillage and crazy talk
and i still make more sense
to myself and within the context of
normal
when i am sitting still and i will seek out the corners of coffee shops for the rest of my time here until i am unsatisfied enough with
all that is lacking in me and the.what and the rest of it all of the shit i bring with me
if you check my bag out you get it, how i can't leave without knowing i might not come back tonight or at all actually better off thinking that just up
ahead and around
the next bend is something like i thought i would die without and
as it turns out i was more than half-right, but yeah-
just maybe i might not be lost and not found like every sock i once owned or
like you as my pet
peeve and project in-between lovey and dovey came weed maybe you made
me sick or at least it was both of us down and unlucky
downtown and unstuck we came when i was flung off like jelly from fingertips
fat little nuggets i loved to laugh at and miss
even still and
even though this is far worse
than any missed holidays spent thinking of how empty the space can be sometimes since you dismissed me without considering where
i would be in the months and the winters of this year and next and
then one day it turns out i flickered into not sleep with eyelids unwilling
but working and i saw
glitter and eyelashes from last night when i played
dress up and old me and i pranced around your place and i made eyes at
the stranger in you and the mirror behind what i saw i liked
just for those minutes when i had us both
fooled
into thinking that this
despite all that is lacking
like air that tastes too exciting to talk of today i remember
new york city the first week a new month
december
and i die less just a little on nights when i find
you
and your version of
alive
at the foot of the bed i lie down in and right beside my head as
i exhale for lack of whynot and also thanks to your pillows
the cool side hides always but still i'm not sorry or worried or bothered
like you might wonder if i care but i don't need this i swear
you stay right there while i hide
out somewhere else and if you can't find me you might try
the corner of nowhere and union square writing and shivering into the morning light
happy and holding on tight to the taste of hot chai and the city wind whipping
my cheeks into blushing i love it i must be
still me and not rusty and old like this
girl i know three time zones too late in las vegas and she lost
all sense of what this
feels like
hopeful and wide eyed blinkingback tears but not those kind
the good stuff
from whatever is not this
and hers is not his
but her own in the meantime i might just make time
to climb something somewhere in spite of my boots and what i find at the bottom is tooth rot
and grave plots i picked out for myself in my mind
thousands of times before deciding on tattoos and cremation and you made
more sense to get behind
and so like i might have already implied but not admitted to you or the mirror
outright and audible like those microphones you like to tell stories about how you made love to them audiences loved it and you were your own superfan
but i will try not to judge you like i do myself. in the long nights i spent since
then and when i looked ahead and found nothing in my life that made sense
and no one whose name or outlook even passed for okay let alone liked how my shit rhymes and finally
i like how it feels to make eye contact without going blind
and i want more
always more and then all of it all in one bite i never know when i am done
and when to say when and then i get left out in hallways of places i never played myself within but should have done less
to show that i want
i think i will try not to stare at the sun
from now on and i guess i will hope for some whynot and keep writing down
what doesn't work still and why air makes me wonder where is december and
new york and all i can do until then is
just gum food and notice as little as possible
subtle clues i will miss
from you i'm sure of this and i hope
you take your time with figuring out that
i'm nuts
but not unfun just displaced and isn't everyone really just lying
when they say they wouldn't change a thing if they could and yet
even i can admit that i can't yet be all dead and nightmare ish esque
since i met you i liked more complete moments in time and whole nights, even
more unlikely
than i can remember finding in hindsight even back when i was still able
to call myself
i
and use capital letters without hesitation despite what you might think
i don't like
to look in the mirror i really try not to its just that
i'm trying hard to fight off what urges i might have forgotten to medicate slightly
left the antivenom back behind in brooklyn and sunlight makes me feel awkward
and giddy like whatnot
and i look for things that i know only by their shape and rely on touch to find most of what lies in the corners of my better mood days
more of these blind my hindsight and i forget already some of the shit i regret and left out from letters mailed back to them all in the last month i guess oops or else ohwell you helped me get up and get off and then
over it all
and to think how its only october and how i can feel myself falling for whatever lines might land on my shoulder like birds singing something i find it
annoying
but nice at the same time i can't lie its not like me these days to try new things and people on for size but you seem to fit at least something i kind of need help filling up which is blank spaces inside this time frame city of sin and i can't find a single reason to take pride in staying single here please tell me why
i like finding new reasons to leave well enough alone for the sake of justright
so this is what i might have been like in real time and real life without all of the nonsense and noise drowning me out
and smoke in my eyes broken mirrors cracked like all i surrounded myself with why i might have missed something big in the meantime make me forget what all
i regret and remind me to
let myself like how it feels to be
breathless and love and less dead than alive.

i.want.so.much. again.

again.

nowitsoundslikethis.lintlikefilmysurface..ofyourskinitsangrytexture.makesmeshiverand.recoil.likeiliketodolatelywhen its.late.too.late.i.smell.it.and.taste.it.the.air.is.stale.with.cardboard.throat.things.escaped.snores.and.random.words.i.guess.this.is.what.it.looks.like.on.the.verge.of.furious.nothingness.the.view.is.lovely.you.hang.it.out.to.dry.where.i.cant.miss.it.and.you.know.i.hate.it.just.because.i.want.it.but]cant cant cant

get out of bed before i

missed everything

which is really nothing

when i formed that last thought i forgot

how humiliating

i bravely made me sound like you

and your very much vip lifestyle where doors open on cue when you and your thumbprint pass last things last

and i

forgot what year it could be by now i make my bed without ever waking up

somehow

and lie in it all times incompatible with life and i lie just so i might have some lame lines to make you laugh sometimes through the static and crackling phone line i am secretly grateful for the excuse to turn you loose because its so late in new york city by now although i wouldn't know, not really and never could get into wristwatches and erasable ink and things that imply i have time

to think again, to formulate a plan

to fuck it all up once again

and when i land in a pile of shit and twisted wrists elbow crooks and corners of kneecaps shinbones and high heels with plenty of reasons to look up

since i left myself little in the way of choices again and i cant imagine what clearly does not run through your mind but maybe that's fine and fantastic for you and maybe my own could take notes and make lists and hints and to-do tasks could maybe make less of a mess in my cheap and stiff sheets that i wish were like comfort soul food for the skin or something less like sleep less in this desert in smaller than single twin bed sheets scratching the lack of sensory stimuli seems like something i saw coming or i would have if

i could have seen the forest for the trees and you on the roof pick one i dare you

at sunrise or some inconsequential time of whatever day it never dawned on me not to interrupt your pointed commentary even though you just gave up every time i was out of my mind you should know and i couldnt hear most of your stammering and fumbling for words or whatever might have lodged itself in your soft palate i guess

because i couldnt do much more than prototype and cliche it was the first time i made a mess and i should have spent less money on monstermaking voodoo tools the shed out back was me

and i should have.could.have.would.have.wont have.regretted.your.eyes.turned.at.those.hope.diamond.type.times.in.my.frayed.and.game.over.player.one.mind's eye.where.sometimes.its less this and just a split ended eyelash different than some other way it once was in your mind while i was out shopping for real estate which i made no effort to pay for and yet i dared karma and payback to play hide and go seek with all the absent

empty

lack of care

that i would have likely sold to you for the shirt off your back if you'd have it that way but no matter my fruitless searches for what i make earth better for being a consumer and user of people and air and subleased corners of places form a foggy uneasy noise in my throat when some unnassuming and well meaning nosy type nonsense face that i see but can't place from where i might be this person's favorite story to tell random strangers for some reason or another but still i can't say for certain

that i remember much more than how small my

hands

felt inside yours with my eyes open but everything else that had once looked so much like hope and french toast on sundays to you was just not much more than second hand smoke clouds outside your window where i can see cranes lifting big men and metal buildings constructing some new thing i would never be welcome in anyway so i'm not done with you if not for the sake of regret and past due late fees and library books that we stole from taxes you paid to the city because

that's just your kind of thing...

i guess what i smoked to provoke arguments in your apartment on orchard made less of a mess than what happened to your bed and your mattress so well suited for more than just one of us, the sort of setup and situational irony i would surely appreciate if only i could give a shit

or see the look in your shoulders slumped over like skulking along the sidewalk away from me always these days and even the nights remind me of your tiptoe ish type of walk its a random thing i must have dreamt up one afternoon or maybe its just this fucking twin bed that i can't get into without spitting in my face or what i picture it to look like and cursing

always cursing

myself for this

and for what i can't find and never could afford to admit i couldn't care less to even look for like it was too much of a risk to take the plunge

fingertips scraping empty pockets and coming up worse than before its true and i stopped digging for change

and other bliss makers magic markers and playing cards with diamonds on the outside

waiting for me to find and isn't it mind-blowing and obvious all wrapped up in starchy cheap shots and sheets stained with what i had to offer you before darkness became all this fifth pocket has in store for what that's worth and all of this is just the thing i'm trying to avoid

addressing the dirt and the lint and how it feels like memory and empty beds you blew your air into for lack of better more stable things in both of our lives i suppose you were right to shave yourself smooth so unsettling i said about it back then in bad neighborhoods where car alarms and snoring patternless hugs me inside still when i can't get used to this cricket-filled air and the altitude sickens me

so they say i wouldn't blame it on the elevation as much as most days when i wake up only to find i cannot wake up and i blink but it only mixes mascara years old into the gritty things i go to rub into bloodshot only to rot my layers of skin off from overcompensating for this

and i could pick the phone up i guess

and let you talk me down from the ledge like you probably do best but here's why this still fills me with air and gas bubbles like embolisms ruptured toxic

i'm not even this

or that

i'm nothing but wasted

space and

displaced hopless case file in cold corners of this arid unthinkable sleeping awake place where i still never know when to get up for whatever the day won't play out for me but still i can feel the simple one sensation that sustains me with if nothing else, the familiar and the failures and my family fucking with all of this and telling me

to wash my sheets and my feet and for what is what i would surely want to know

if i ever found any forgotten atom of energy unspent still hiding in some hidden pocket of an old purse perhaps inside a broken parliament filter that snapped like the best of things and like

this

does not bend because of physics and emptiness

voids and dark matter the proof of which does exist, ask nat-geo on cable and me at my best i still feel the full weight of what would fall from my head if i could

ever care about what i forgot to pack accordingly and was thrown out from my contraband carry-on as if a one way ticket to this

wasn't punishment and karma in the endzone victory dance in my face for the ages i know

it would have been enough

but then, i don't need much more than this

and soaking wet nylon low thread count and too worn in to be new ish i think but then i think about cheap

and how sheets and bullshit i spit here and in life is like dirty fingernails lazy with what i lack and can't find now or then for lack of looking or what i can't know but still it strikes me

shin on the clapboard there is a dent that endures on us both after too many nights of this and unthinkable calenders torn off somehwhere else i imagine since you stopped filling my missing pieces in with your whispers and rants and all i know now

is what i can't touch for lack of so much and so little in me and my eyelids like anchors

and icebergs in me continue to cover up what the bad reception and the wind might leave to blank spaces and imagination

but i'd rather not

feel the air move where you are not there to brace my flesh from freefalling out into nothing

weighted down by nothing i float on forever maybe why wait for me when chasing me once found you

cursing

more often than usual and for that

i can't bear to bring my eyes to focus on anything but just the end of my nose and the scars

from where i held out my hand and i opened my fist and released your best efforts from flimsy half assed girl grip and skipping stones on the water alone let me know i was still alive and right about this

i can't look up even though that's the only option left-

its not that i care its that the falling stars scare the shit out of my raw blistered fingertips now after this

moved mountatins out of me and i moved brooklyn into my closet with my human being ness of messy things i know this

your absence is my fault i guess its just the latest in a string of victories for fate and lady karma luck is all out to fuck with my great big debt- that i never paid off and when i watched you slip through my creased palm

the spaces between knuckles crooked joints that dodged you but still i shook you loose and refused to look you in the eye

and this

twin bed and vacant sign overhead burnt out for lack of bulbs and concern for keeping up appearances and this

is my best and nothing worse than bad acting i have small hands. and veins that would freeze if they could find the time to

call a spade a sidewalk crack reminder of stagnant rigor and oh well not for nothing but for lack of even nothing off putting vapid and free

of youandme and sheets that still smell like me i think you said this one time although i can't be sure of much at these elevations and all i know is

this is not my life.

Tonight im okay. Tomorrow is another story though.

maybe.

i still.

want to be saved.

afterall.

you.

you can paint me all the colors of hell

and sketch

me.

as the devil.

in your books.

of history

and for the sake of

posterity

and question

marks.

begging

answers of

blank spaces

and nonsense

makers

like me

and my noise

as you say.

i could care

more perhaps

but why?

you know too well

for books to explain

simple things

like existentialists

and this.

we are

through.

at least,

i speak the truth

and always will.

and i'm still.

not apologizing.

so air your

grievances

with my brother

or some other

audience

better suited

for your

purposes and

missed the mark

perceptions

question marks

i turned

upside-down

like

this hell

and house

you call a

home.

just once i made that mistake

too much

for you to take.

the truth

hurts

like i won't do

anymore

at hands

of yours

and yours.

too bad for blame's sake

my namesake

and honor

left

and straight on

till morning

came.

i hear it calling

my name.

and it's late

i am gone.

not like it matters

to you.

or yours.

all things considered...

i could be way.

way.

worse off.

...what if. ....the usual escape routes are just. not. working.

...this is all just...

(spilled.milk.)

...i let it soak me and i wait.

for something more.

just to see which will rot first.

(i.win.)

you called it in the air all those months and bloody noses ago.

you arrogant.

fuck.

if i showed up at your door with jacks in my hand and challenged you to a re-match...

...would you play with me?

i want to shake myself until all the words inside my throat come unstuck and find their way out of me one by one until one day all that's left of me and my confusion is just a mess on the sidewalk perhaps there is a worse fate than this and i think, at last. i am just a shell and maybe now i can crack and break and something winged and audible and full of hunger and wonder and trying on life for the first time and magic things that i want to set free but still they seem to be just out of reach of my fingertips and slippery beneath my feet the soles of which are numb from wandering too long in search of someone or some city maybe both i was convinced must exist in an answer to my question marks and some solution to the blank space that clouds my vision if i dare to look beyond the broken sandals i have worn thin to the asphalt burning just beyond inches outside my own lines it seems unlikely but so it is that no one exists in any zip code in the many that i've visited since i first tasted uncertainty tinny on my tongue like mercury maybe i wish i knew less than i do now about my own fatal flaws in character unflappable and able to make me inaudible sometimes with all the choking i keep doing lately and the corosive quality of what i keep from you and my best efforts to swallow whole lifetimes just burn like cheap whiskey or bourbon or so i've heard but couldn't care less to test the theory out myself only this is what i guess i have been getting at with all of this: i only leaked the random one thing i have been known to use within the world of sparingly and even some might add that i can drink with common sense but what you think of me now is just what i've left you with and all that's worth is sidewalk cracks and eggshells cracked open only this carton's contents have no life within just what could have been and isn't. and you'd be wrong to think this much of me and you should know this first before a rush to judge me fit to call myself a poet or not worth it perhaps, still know this about what i want to say is never what you wanted and maybe this is fun for a day or a break from reality a vacation from some outlined life plan you might have burned holes in from gripping it too many days in a row with tightly clenched fists and white knuckles raw with fighting your urge to just fly like the little bird in annie lennox's finest song ever go figure i said when i heard it was her who sang something not worthy of gunpowder explosions i'd love to unleash on everything involving the eurythmics but wait. i forgot where i was and so it goes with those of us who wander lost and unspoken for long enough to write some of it down just in time to sit down to the dinner table and serve ourselves more of what became of the bakers dozen that bore no life for some reason or none at all maybe chaos does make more sense than this thing they like to put your worst days in some drawer away to hide them with the whites and linens crisp and folded and manageable unscary and understandable they pat you on the head or back and patronize all you know in pores and dust that make up your proof that you exist and have a right to think beyond what little white lie never did sit quite right with me you know the one about design and sounds something like treason and betrayal of the part of my mind that knows better than to believe in things we can't see or breathe in or out and it sounds funny how 'everything happens for a reason' makes me go weak in the knees and curl up my fingertips to keep from reaching for new words and phrases i need to purge from me to make way for new ones and instead i feel like lead vests they make you wear for xrays at the dentist stretch my chest down to my calloused toes i can see but not feel so really it's why i like them more now when i put them to work and can really see how much walking away from the world that would say something in spite of my palpable misery like a cliche about reasons mysterious make me like myself better when i notice my feet unaware they are attached all the while to me it's like walking or running to nowhere from worse than that gives my feet purpose and makes me love something my blood runs right through despite feeling or something like it just ends at the achilles and tendons like this one make tourniquets out of extremities void of pain sensors and nerve endings frayed thanks to where i've been just before this break in the clouds maybe all the while who knows i could have been just circling like vultures do out here in death valley and annie would be lost for words to make light fluffy pop hits out of such things as i put left before right and keep eye level right by my big toe and take a load off my mind now that focus is back to black spots in my vision and all i can see is what i can't feel really and it's almost as good as just being a reader of nightmares or else i exist for a moment in the awareness of diversion... i wish i didn't know quite so much about silence and chaos and alone in third-person i like myself better with all the lights off and stuck to the wall like sticky tape fly traps and italian ice sticky fingers in winter out here it always is just me in the desert and i wish you could hear this tonight from below your big plate glass window maybe three time zones from now actually the sun is burning your face into cool sides of pillowcase but when you run out of those too maybe you'll slip a new one on for lack of ingenuity perhaps or maybe by design i fell in love with someone in first-person who mistook his feet for mine and i had no nice parting prize like i might have if i'd found the game show circuit the first time it would have been right only now i am old and slow to know and realize that i have the right answer to random questions and i just need something more like confidence and less of pats on my back with which you can keep in your bins of things to give to charity along with down coats we won't be needing here in hell on earth it seems safe to say, and whatever else in mind games and heart parts got beat to shit in packing quickly and suitcases bent them into half and creased they ripped all easily like parchment paper shredded left to blow in the breeze i remember when weather forecasts mattered more and sidewalks had cracks that paper like that could fall into and that was all just fine and commonplace at the time i think as i see the birds circling low but i know better than to think they must be smarter than me and can sense something sinister i already beat them to that forgone conclusion and i make no excuses for my feet because they still work and put distance between myself and what i know better than this.

i feel like ice cubes in las vegas make as much sense as we did when every now and then you could get caught forgetting yourself and remembering why you hadn't sent me home yet but then somewhere a breeze blew static into the ancient antenna rigged up just so and we lose the connection and i am consumed by the facts i bite down on my bottom lip until blood tastes like your armor it feels familiar foreboding and tinny like rust and what else we have left after rainy seasons pass like lightening bugs flash and suffocate from the simple fact that they were wanted and watched too much and with artificial closeness that makes more moments for me than need be and more jars like death traps i was too in love with the sight of lightening bugs and flashes of what could be magic show mysteries headlined by mother nature maybe too readily i applauded and stood up on tiptoes like you might notice me more if i was childlike eager and in the end it mattered less to you and the summer and what was burned out at my own fingertips inside a vacuum like jelly jar but even now still i trip over what i might miss for too many years from now even though i fault myself for thinking that desperate and friendship add up to of.course and in my haste to forget how loud and unnerving alone sounds can be lately i proved that you might have been right after all the minutes and nights i went missing inside mind mazes of my own design and what-if games i played while your chest and my hopes for a life with love or something like it would rise and swell all full of life and potential only to fall and concave your rib cage became without much life left between us to fill you up diesel fuel smells like your thumbs which you flash to appease me and it works temporarily every time on me only to find me fidgeting nervous in nights after this one spent bruising my knees on the wall where i stupidly play sleeping sane person knowing full well where the edge of the single bed is and still smacking my shins black and blue every time the lights in my room go out like the fireflies still sitting reminders of what i didn't poke holes in for once in my life and if the inflection in my voice gives me away well you already know why and why not stop shaking inside like fault lines diverging beneath some metallic sealed surface you shine like the promise of some forgotten-about penny left heads up for my eyes to find before yours and you let me bend down to claim my parking lot prize because you know, afterall, that i need good luck like flies in jars need airholes and you need me to try harder to keep it together and pulled apart we might find ourselves more nights than not in these watered-down type of times when nothing said is the worst you could drop on my head like an anvil or anchor a dead weight sometimes awful what lead must feel like my heart i picture morbidly like some nightmare recurring where you and i starred in our private drama and only i watched it unfold as you thickened my skin with your word whipping left me to lick my wounds and howl at the moon i never know if it's full or new or when to let it go like you.

please forgive my absence now, and in the math and the life and the glow and shock and all that comes with the after. if ever counts for anything, please forgive me for that first since never again will you have to wonder whatever happened to that one girl who always seemed to stick to the floorboards when the before had passed and now it makes sense how her words and the absurd seemed to fall so freely from her lips and how you miss her absence in the happily-ever-after scene on loop and unable to keep you from blinking back tears that get stuck in the space just behind your eyelids now. it startles me to find you hiding somewhere unlikely in my nest of frayed nerve-endings and neurons mis-firing constantly and darting around and tangled up in me you sit there lazy sunday and summer seemed much better this year if only for your cryptic questions left to hang me in your boneyard of miscalculated risks and doomed but amusing company of summers and couches and new sheets meant to hang on the line like me all soaking wet with you and your back as you turn it uncaring and telling me more than your glory day sob stories and revealing more still than your blinking and pausing and lying eyes winking and so it turned out that when i turned to go all that was lost on your back and your welcome mat were the words and the what and the why of me and that's just who you never again may look in the eye. and in lieu of my mess and display of spectacular disaster on any given day in every split end on this mop atop my head afixed to scalp shreds of which remain long after i've left perhaps for good this time tangled and remembering

what is what now that september reminds us to scatter and patch together our plans hammered out and nails on a chalkboard

my voice is truly like cracked sidewalks i skip when i remember to sometimes blindsided by chalk drawings and errant bird feathers like omens to me

of autumn and crunching leaves for the rush of it maybe a bit morbid but i might as well dance as long as i can see the forest in spite of the trees and naked branches like women who shiver at the thought of november and new york and alone maybe where i went wrong

a rake and a cup of kid gloves could have should have but would have been wasted on such a glib little thing as i was not meant for sing-alongs and take-away lessons like morals of stories i never could bite back the cynic but tried till my lips were left crusted bloody and i was given a dirty look or two in my day before it was all said and done and i was one of the lucky ones

who went missing before i might have otherwise went on to hover around borderlines of myself and instead of dancing between genius and insanity perhaps i made more mountains inside the molehills of my mind when i climbed out from underneath your idea of what i was like and got high on some guy's lap on some otherwise mind-numbingly ordinary tuesday night in the buckle of some state they equate with the belt of the bible, i know well after i tried that on for size and it might look more right now that i have more life under my own belt perhaps its just not meant for people like me to take pride or find comfort in knowing that in spite of the spiderweb feeling like sticky uncertain and dirty and knowing

i walked right into this eyes open and willing and still i find myself shivering with skin crawling i try to think outside the lines and remind my reason and logic that somewhere tonight, even, there must be some like-minded creature who has been here and won't mind me stepping on toes of footprints tracked through the snow over more time than i could find icicles to lick into puddles of delicious remainders of what tried to fall but just couldn't re-trace as well the path of those others who came this way first but froze up like i might have under circumstances and had i known what came to light long after i was in the red and up on top and had yet to find

the truth about choices and naked seeds and branches left without leaves don't mind because they can't afford to believe in second chances or like i could never find buttons to push inside calculators of me that signaled the way off stage and out of my mind long enough to get through the web i was meant to weave through all of this and let you fall through my dazed fingertips still snapping up bits of what summer left before the first frosty morning broke off tips of split ends and grass blades cracked in half like we could be seen doing if you ever did look

i wish i never did stop blinking back spots and red marks from what blinded me back then when i could buy more than enough for you to hold in lieu of my lost and found pride or something like i later heard i ought to have held on to tightly but chose to avoid conversations with night after night in hunched over stances i can still shake my head at the blurry lines between things i thought were my eyes being honest and lies i told myself outside the margins like some kind of aside to assure myself of what,

i still don't know.

in every split end on this mop atop my head afixed to scalp shreds of which remain long after i've left perhaps for good this time tangled and remembering this and us as it was just called off for inclement weather and sometime far into never maybe i will stop and bend and smell the scents of others again and find pleasure in some plan brand new and then you won't be any better or worse off i know now that fairweather friends and foes i chose to keep close in spite of ties to my better brain matter advising me against those who rose for no occasion of mine and posed alone in photos while i shivered from the wind blowing right through my ears and you could not care less for what i whispered years of how alone it feels to be so hoarse from shouting all the worst of me and what i fear the most is that this and us and we and all we appear to be is here by sheer chance and subject to strong winds and circumstance like changing tides and storms that subside only to find you missing from my inner tube when i float on alone the other side of my cries for help i cannot find an answer from your deaf ears that waves of woes and words of mine keep crashing into in some crescendo-like fashion they remind me of us like swells and swollen flesh and rising just to ebb again you never know what time is high noon although the moon is full and so are you of lies and self defeating nooses tied around your neck and i buy into you and all you never said was for sale but still i might make you an offer that strikes you as better than nothing just maybe you like me too and then ever and after and starfish dismembered get up like i did this morning before you felt me move and they slowly grow into back together again i dropped your hand as you fight back what friends try not to hide and write it in the sky instead of in the sand where words get tossed back out to sea with things that crash like waves and me and we wash them away with what happened today and you will scrub me away i picture your shower in the future for years perhaps i am gone within the hour but maybe i linger just a little too long for your liking i gathered as much in these last few minutes like lifetimes i spent being quiet enough to hear echoes enough of them my own voice throwing me upon you and symantics and syntax and rhythm and meter seem scattered and sliced up replaced with what may be easier for some to swallow like fruit that gets tossed into a blender and poured into something as juice and less pulp perhaps but also less guts are what this new format has. but i understand that you lack the stuff you would need to stomach more than just fluff and bleached blondes and heartfelt apologies for what, i can't say but i bet it had less to do with any mess that was made of your sheets and your lovenest and more to do with reality checking in at someone else's request and you called for this best-case scenario i keep telling myself as i force down the feet from your sweat and i point my head up and hope to god that the rest will catch up or follow suit at least long enough to find me free of your worst-kept secret i wish it were not so true as this but you made us what is and i wound up in a blender with knots in my hair and fistfuls of what came loose in how many lines you choked on while i waited for you to choose dare and what your face looked like was what i will remember long after this when i dared you to tell me the truth and you could have just shared a smile with me and we could have just left it at that and your balcony maybe keeps better secrets than you could that night with just what i saw on the wall and your face the writing and what was scrawled just beyond this and tonight and last night there was Us but all at once it seems i realized your silence screamed all this time back at me to just look carefully at the timeline of nonsense that surrounds this busted love triangle perhaps i knew all along the words to this static noise song and maybe still i could be wrong but i can't hope for what was not thrown under the bus of what was something i made up for the thing that sprung from you and me and i dubbed Us and look to the left outside the margins i never noticed but we have no more lines left to write song lyrics in now that summer left us more alone than before and how could it be august already when still my head is spinning from what i went hoarse over and all that you carelessly tossed back out to sea as if i were broken bits of seashells maybe, or else just articles of clothing from pirates and such callous uncurious wandering limbs as yours could just boomerang particles of driftwood right back at me as easily as strong breezes come calling for people like you and featherweight things that make gypsies seem stagnant and cities seem smaller than they should when you make me see you still even now, in reflections of standing pools of water and whenever i hear certain chords strummed together i gather what i have together and blow you some kind of kiss from inside me i wonder sometimes if you got any of these postmarked undeliverable but still i keep trying to reach you despite what your eyes give away when i turn and you flinch ever so slightly i know i can't fight you on this or what is and what might be a piece to some other puzzle jammed into mine just because it looked nice in some types of light i think- but by now we all know and have to admit that you just don't fit within this lattice i prize as my own and i watch your chest rise and fall as i climb out of your grip and trip over lies i wish you cared enough to spit but never did until i cried over winter it's coming and when it arrives it means jars of fireflies and fourth of july fireworks shows we hiked up to see that time are just more of what lies behind and gets archived or tossed into boxes of good times and past lives and snapshots of contrived smiles i despise but sometimes pose for in spite of myself and what teeth fell out last year and what will die between deaf ears and flecks of color that dance on irises blue like the waves that slam into high tide pools of spilled milk and whatever else i cried for might hide inside corners of your eyes i always find myself searching for center in me and your moving target of a heart that keeps on beating despite how sure i've become that i am dying without you to lean on these days and on colder nights to come with tight lipped smiles and eraser marks give me away and all i try not to advertise but just like you read ahead in books you know that i write to keep from blowing through things like you and the fight between what is and what just won't fit is rising like swells announced by seagulls and brought on by the pull of twighlight i swallow back pride and put left before right and i close my eyes as your door creaks closed behind me one final time.