I dangle the yarn in front of Henry's face, watching him bat at it uselessly with his tiny paws. Henry is a small orange cat brimming with malice towards everything and everyone besides his masters. His masters that may provide and take care of him, but they toy with him just as well. With the yarn or string or whatever in one hand and a grin on my face, I make certain that Henry's attempts are fruitless. I have no intention to torment him, but he is tormented nonetheless. I have had things dangled before my eyes, out of my reach my entire life.

A voice that isn't used to being heard, it no longer tries. Or is it that she realized long ago that one learns nothing when their mouth is open? One may teach, but this is seldom the intended intention. I'll drink to that. But what won't I drink to?

My highest respects

Roxy Reno.
His life is one dirty, elegant poem.
He's a minimalist and an alcoholic.
There was this church group on the streets outside some bar one night, handing out flyers, telling people they were going to hell, generally being hateful.
He gets up on a trash can near them and starts reading sex poems very loudly, and draws a crowd of like thirty people.
The cops came and wanted to arrest him but the crowd he amassed defended him and got him out of trouble.
That is a fucking poet.

Meaning It

I can't tell you what is right for your life
But whatever it is you choose
You better Fucking mean it

We sit here and talk about "meaning it"
As the empty cups and stacks of verse pile up.
But what does that even mean?
Mean it.
Smoking your cigarette to the filter. That's meaning it.
Having an audience of one, and the show goes on. That's meaning it.
Declining to leave a suicide note. Is that meaning it?
Burning your own art. Is that meaning it?
When I keep your secrets
And your's as well
And especially your's.
That's Fucking Meaning It.

dictation

"Trust. That's just a fucking word. Mean it."

"You know what the Million Dollar Poet has that the rest of us don't? Happiness."

"I stopped wearing a hat because I kept getting so many kisses. Had to take it off every time anyway."

Heaven?
Hell?
Purgatory?
Earth?
What if I'M wrong?
What if YOU'RE wrong?
Do you believe in an after life?
A before life?

Where were you?
Where were you when our lost souls were starving?
When they were in hospital beds across the country on suicide watch?
When they were drunk behind the wheel with the keys in one hand, in the other a phone with HER number already dialed?

Were you in the streets handing out paper and spreading hate?
You're a million dollar poem.

For every man who feared his Father
Who missed his Mother
Who has held the bottle like their only child
Who has poured his soul out into ink and blood
And Meant It
Who felt deserving of pain.
Look for your Brother
Look for your Sister
When you've found them
Keep looking.

Strength

What is it to be strong?
Look to the mighty oak.

He is solitary
Challenging no one
Never disrupting the flow
Always allowing others to coincide.

If you call this weakness
The next thunderstorm
Watch him through your window
As he bears our Mother's wrath
Alone.

On the train

We pass many train crossings with faceless drivers parked alongside. They’re just waiting for us to get the fuck out of their way. It’s a convenience for us to just keep barreling down the countryside in this metal container towards our destination. How many times a day do we inconvenience others for our own sake? Not enough.

Some days are better than others. That is what I think to myself as I watch the grey landscape slide by at an extremely underwhelming speed. Today is good despite the pains in my stomach. I’ve been without true friendship for a few months now, and a man can go longer without nourishment than he can a sympathetic ear or a familiar touch. I don’t know why I do this to myself, intentionally starve myself some days. Huckleberry told me the drunk and the poet tend to have only one meal a day, but I was doing it before he told me those words. Huckleberry. Huckleberry, Roxy Reno, Coyote, and I are the poets of that cold little river town. Sometimes things change. Huck and Reno are going to prison soon and I’m fleeing the area for a more familiar climate. Coyote will be left to pick up the slack for a few months, but you get that on these bigger jobs. I’m reminded of my hunger once more as this sad looking woman passes by with a cart of over priced refreshments. That’s not what I’m hungry for. The woman pushing the cart seems like the kind of person who gave up on their dreams and needed a way to support their unwanted child. The kind of woman whose hair is only held in place by sweat and semen and doesn’t look you in the eye, just stairs in your direction. The scenery outside the window could be the same picture on a never-ending conveyor for all I know. The familiarity is overwhelming and disappointing. As of this moment, five other trains have passed us traveling the opposite direction. Every time one does I find myself wishing for it to buck to the side just a little too much and collide into us at top speed. It’s not that I’m craving death right now, as I have before, just something to break this cycle of normalcy that is my life. At the beginning of our departure, the lack of rifling through papers was very noticeable as we were told to flip through the safety pamphlets in front of us. I do not wish for death, but if it comes I will welcome it. The sun will set, and rise the next day. Just as I have died every night and been born the next morning.

On a train

Every foot of ground we cover

It brings a loud clack along with it

Not dissimilar to the sounds of a typewriter

To start and then to finish a story you must endure these sounds

Thousands of times

I've had three vehicles since I started driving

They all have been increasingly less masculine

My first vehicle was a red pickup truck

I'd haul random shit or my friends in it across town

I'll never have another love like my first

Then came the Buick

It had no radio for the longest time

Many songs were sang and shared in there

I'll always remember the day she died in my arms

Now

Currently

I have a miserable old bitch

A blue mini van who has grown more cantankerous with each day

But she gets the job done and is still faithful, to my knowledge

I've always referred to my vehicles as "her" or "she"

Maybe that's why they never work out for me

I breathe out

The Lioness breathes in

Would you tell a beast,

"Though Shalt Not Kill" ?

Morality is not a matter of concern

Where there is no Man

death rebirth repeat

I am not a bird watcher

But I could name you a few

If you so pleased

The Hunt

The woods are filled with the ghosts of shadows appearing and disappearing at random intervals with the lightning. The shadows that are cast are but shallow reflections of their owners. The Hunt. A game of life and death. Ying and Yang. The Doe is aware of the war that weather is waging, she does not understand it nor does she see the Hunter.

The Hunter,

picking his steps methodically,

licking his teeth,

stalking.

The Hunter lets the cool rain wash over him, steaming off of his solid frame from the red hot passion. The events from the eventual kill run on loop through his mind's eye. The Hunter knows the importance of Praying over the prey and asking Mother forest for taking this gift, but he intentionally neglects harmony for this midnight hunt. The Hunter sees the forest, truly. He takes the shape that is necessary for this dark evening. The Doe walks cautiously, but she'd never suspect the mother forest to take advantage of her. The Doe stumbles past the Hunter, not seeing him for his true form. The Hunter sees his opportunity and plunges a solid wooden spear into her heart. A spear made of a tree from this very forest.

The Doe lets out final cries of passion,

of pain,

of spiritual release,

and goes limp.

The Hunter removes the bloody spear and casts it out into the dark, never to be used mercilessly again. He feels nothing. This was not for the result, A slain Doe left in the woods, but for the hunt itself. The Hunter leaves an empty corpse, devoid of a pulse or a functioning heart, in the forest. He assumes it will be absorbed back into our Mother Earth.

"Why? Why do you do it?" I ask Mike, glancing a little too noticeably at his wrists. Mike looks down at his wrists then to mine as he gathers the words I never can find. I covet his insight and pseudo intellectualism, but I know at the same time it comes with a price. Mike smiles at me maliciously, "With all of this 'activity' going on in your head you've got to be prone to wanting to blow your brains out, right? It's like a God damned Irish wake up there, maybe you should tell the land lord." He says to me, smiling even bigger now, avoiding the question. We're in a local cafe, sitting in the corner and I'm getting odd looks now as people notice me giving the empty chair across from me worried looks. "Fuck those people, they're worthless. Their lives nor their opinions matter one bit." Mike assures me as he gently lifts my iced coffee off the table, weighing each movement carefully, and takes a thoughtful drink. "Also, I appreciate you switching to black coffee." He adds. "No problem, it's grown on me."

"I'm sure I have. You're wondering about the twitch you developed aren't you? You know how computers run more slowly and such when using two operating systems? You're not as sophisticated as a computer." I take that in for a moment, as Mike hands me the coffee. I take a contemplative sip, letting the cold bitter liquid dwell, the taste of which is tainted by my smoker's breath but not in a bad way. "So why do you do it?" I ask again, less compassionately, less carefully. He looks me in the eye, something's missing there. "Bloodletting. It's an old 'medical procedure'. The culture at the time didn't understand proper human anatomy and didn't understand the actual purpose of blood. When folks would get sick, they attributed it to 'bad blood'. That’s where the modern saying comes from. So when these people got sick, the cure they saw was to bleed the bad blood from them. Many people died from this because the large quantities they would take at a time. So that's what bloodletting is, bleeding the disease out. What I'm getting at is I, we, am/are sick. We've collected ill experiences, memories that plague, and sickness over the past twenty years. We're emotionally diseased. Figuratively speaking, there is someone else's blood running somewhere through our veins. Whose fault is that? Yours. You invested too much of us into someone else, now they've got ahold of us whether they or us like it. A tumor in your brain may not have asked to be there, but it will kill you regardless. I'm just trying to get rid of the bad blood."

"Mike. You said bloodletting didn't work."

"It was a fucking metaphor Riley."

This tool, this device, is the oldest known to man. The knife fulfilled the wishes of the rich and the needs of the poor. It is quite crude, but it's lack of complexities works for it. Every man conceals his and brags of it's size, showing how big of a man he is. However if you want to put it to use, you must get close enough to plunge it into their heart. I Learned how to use my knife when I was a young man, and I have been killing girls and their expectations ever since.

I have picked the fruits of other's words and meaning.

In turn I have taken the seeds of that fruit

And have sewn them myself.

I now watch the fruits that I bare reaped by others.

Some properly plant them in fertile soil

Other's allow them to ferment and get drunk off them

Our ideas are recycled like the water

typewriter tunes

Memories like the rain pour down

covering me entirely, soaking me to the bone

This storm threatens to drown

Promises to nourish

New crops poke their unknowing heads from the mud

Expecting new life

Expecting continuous nourishment

Only to be trampled under the feet of the blind farm hands

Pour

Pour rain pour

Pour

Pour another drink

I will drown and only the remains of what once were will remain

I will drown because I know how to swim but not how to stop the onslaught

The by-product of this all encompassing gray matter

I do not want to accept this truth that I continuously come back to

The truth that I will never understand my mind

My mind is all I have to understand it with

I've lost a lot of weight since moving

My skinny jeans now look baggy

We're all hungry for something

What I crave is hardly tangible

I've walked through the forest and I've stumbled through the woods

In the forest I allowed our knowing Mother Earth to guide me

She knows all and chooses best but forces nothing upon any soul

Through the paths of the forest I had direction but no known destination intended

I knew when I'd gotten there when greeted by three doe

We asked nothing of each other

Just unmoving, silent, communication

After parting ways I went to tell of the lost siblings I'd found

However in the woods, I was but an orphan born blind

Leaving a trail of beer cans and cigarette butts to guide me back

My own devices left me adrift

I was approached by others, asking if I knew the way

I did not

This act of passion has been pre-meditated, with the event played over in his head months prior. But tonight, is the night. He enters the room and it is dark but he can sense her location, her beautiful yet fragile frame shaking with nervous anticipation. "there's no turning back from this.", He mutters with a malevolent looking grin as he unsheathes the knife. Her eyes lock onto his as every step bridges the gap between them. She preemptively attacks him with ferocity that has never been seen from her by any other. He allows her the illusion of power and control for a few moments and then throws her to the ground, plunging the blade with precision movements into her. Her body contorts with unrestricted passion as she cries out to her God for mercy. He stabs at times quickly and blind with bloodlust, at other times slowly and passionately making each drive of the knife count as he watches her face react. Sweat builds on his body as her body becomes weak while he tells her everything that led up to this. With one final moment of writhing from her body, he knows it's over. He wipes the blade off, leaving evidence from the events of the evening behind as he stares at her gorgeous, unmoving form in the dark. He opens the door to the innocent world outside, presenting his body to the rain as it washes his sins away.

The Fool

To every Man who tried to win the argument of "I love you more"

To every Man who chose the mistress who put him in the hospital over the lady who got him out

To every Man with lapses in his memory and judgment

To every Man who has staked a claim on some cold, lonely couch

To every Man Who has shaken off the cold like a dog shakes dry

You Sir, are fucked.

I've climbed grassy mounds in spring time

To find beautiful displays atop most I'd conquered

Though the only ones I would long to make return visits to

Was when I lived harmoniously with the landscape

Planting a flower for every I'd gently pluck

Huck, the drunk, sits across from me sipping his tea

Huck, the self admitted fool who has helped raise a child that wasn't his

Huck, with his ankle bracelet on, reads me a poem he wrote to his mother

Huck speaks of how he can't wait to go to prison, just so he can move on with his life

Huck speaks of the weight that comes with baring the title poet

The obligation to point ten thousand fingers in the face of tyranny

Ace Up My Sleeve

The players sit around the squat circular table, cards in hand held close to their chest. Their faces barely visible in this dark room, only when taking a drag off of their cigar or cigarette. The only sounds are that of clinking ice in bitter beverages, the subtle tapping on the table, and of course the shuffling of cards. The air is as deadly serious as the stakes of this particular game, with each hand played a sense of caution and ruthlessness is taken. All the players have their amassed colorful chips sitting before them like the spoils of war, except for one. This player is down to his last few chips and perhaps his last hand. He sits with sweat beginning to collect on his hands, he places his cigarette in his mouth and wipes them off on his pants as he waits for the cards to be dealt. Finally receiving his hand, he turns it over and immediately takes a long hit off his glass of whiskey. At first for being dealt a shit hand, and then realizing he'd so obviously given himself away to his opponents. Others begin to fold as the man who holds no drink and smokes nothing raises the stakes. But the man drinking his whiskey has everything to lose but also everything to gain, so he remains in. The man drains his whiskey and thinks about the consequences were he to cheat, never before has he resorted to such a thing. He rules that he can live with this secret submission, if just to go on to play one more hand.

The migrating geese overhead do not understand gravity but they know how to fly.

The trees do not know the days but they know when to meditate.

I do not know where this jagged path is leading but I know how to walk.

When the subtle way of the universe is taught

people know where to go and what to learn

I have found that life often interjects coincidence without explanation. Flipping through a notebook I'd found hidden, I came across long forgotten notes I'd taken at least a years time ago. Among these sloppily and hastily written notes were the results of some personality test I'd not given all that much thought to after removing my pen from the paper. But now as I am sitting at this table, that had but one chair when I entered the room, these lost words resonate like they never did when originally written. I've pondered your nickname for me, Owl, and haven't confirmed any resemblance from others I've asked. But now as I read these near illegible words, The Owl-Problem solver of the animal kingdom, I'm reminded that you saw deeper than surface level. The universe is trying to tell me something, I just don't know what yet.