Animalistic

Crimson life glistens in the night on lunar white teeth
A hunter's eyes reflect beauty and destruction fixed over his prey
Praying for a release
A Wolf with blood soaked jaws and writhing body beneath
Spread eagle beneath a full moon in time for her moons blood
Animalistic cries and movements
Then

Nothing

Stillness in the dark
Rapid change
Hard to soft dark to light
Death to life
Heaving chests and the drip drip drip
Blood running down a savage chin
Rain running down a limestone lord

Desolation

The Illinois countryside passes by outside the window slightly faster than the posted speed limit. Cornfields stretch farther than you’d care to look, oceans of green stalks with small towns nestled in them like their own Atlantis sunken in poverty and ignorance. It’s warm outside and I sit in the passenger seat chain-smoking cheap red cigarettes while my friend drives. He gingerly packs a glass pipe with ground up plant matter while keeping a watchful eye on the road. We have no destination in mind, just a course plotted for happiness and we’re not pulling over until we find it.

“Do you want to hit this?” He asks.

“No thanks, I can’t. You mind if I have some of these beers though?”

“They’re warm, but go for it Man.”

"Thanks."

Drinking with a purpose that isn’t enjoyment while spouting poetry from books and crumpled paper scattered about the floor of the car and throwing empty cans out the window.

The demands of  “Another drink!” yelled above the sound of The Gaslight Anthem on the radio are matched only by the requests of “Another poem!” and the literary litterers drive on until dusk and until other minimum wage workers with minimum wage jobs and expensive tastes finish their shifts.

They join them on their journey, a search for anything that isn’t what’s right in front of them.

Walking through the streets of suburbia after dusk, it’s springtime in America and flags fly proudly outside of houses with floodlights illuminating them to keep their fear at bay. Carrying Styrofoam cups of gas station soda mixed with cheap whiskey, we put one foot in front of the other on yellow and white lines with no planned destination besides a state of separation of mind and body.

We are the children of a post-nuclear family (Sure my parents are happily married, but not to each other) wandering in a capitalist wasteland. The darkness covers our sins from watchful eyes and absent Gods. Tail lights and stop signs. Just try to act natural for one minute, because everyone’s attention is on us (Just like it fucking should be).

A “No thanks, I’m just looking around” attitude coupled with wandering and glazed eyes.

Finally our cheap Styrofoam reservoirs weigh next to nothing and laughter fills the empty streets. No longer adults with responsibilities or tomorrow to worry about but children racing the midnight train down by the tracks, knowing we’ll never win this battle but still trying our damndest.

An amphetamine heart will never rest and a whiskey soul will always thirst.

Providence

Trapped in a thoughtless night, I drag my body ablaze through empty streets and alleys past packed bars and clubs. Window shopping for a good time in the 21st century. The streets may have been paved with gold but they're littered with used condoms and empty beer bottles like bread crumbs to foreign beds in apartments rented by people with no names.
Fingernails diggining into the cracks in the sidewalk, pulling yourself up a drunken cliff wall.

Or staring into a mirror made of polished steel and bolted to the concrete, going over every event leading up to being in this bathroom with the shower on hot hot hot and a towel shoved into the gaps of the door. Breathe your life away into the hospital ventilation system like it's your last breath. A final word is never screamed but always mumbled or choked on. Let me out.

Muscle Memory

Nights like these don't make us who we are, so much as dismantle who we were.


Unsteady hands palm to palm with complete strangers "Thank you for your service."
The smell of cheap black coffee and cowboy killing cigarettes hover freshly over me.

A filthy mouth paired with a clean white uniform never balance the Fuck out.
The sun doesn't rise when you're at thirty thousand feet, you're just meeting it half way from home.

Your golden Messiah is nailed and hanging perfectly centered between two tanned breasts.
Plead insanity if you dare speak at all.

I could talk philosophy with any number of you or I could speak at a rock.
It's always only taken one to dance.


Hail To The Chief plays for the final time as the hand carved wooden box is lowered into the ground, a slow macabre rendition, and the First Lady made widow weeps tears of American pride. Outdated railroad tie stitching keeps a nation from just barely bursting at it's seams.
Muscle memory and dead tourists. The deceased and victimized jockey for position, using our heart strings as the reins.

"It takes more muscles to smile than it does to pull the trigger.", Said the broken Warrior to me. The broken Warrior who also said he hates his wife, but couldn't help but to SMILE as he accounted acts of killing to Me.

You may be able to soak up and release knowledge like a sponge, but I'd rather be a spring and let it trickle from me endlessly and effortlessly.

No stars. No hope.

Black sand paper like shingles scratch up my back as I lay two stories tall with cigarette in hand. The consistent list is on my mind once more. You, Her, that other one, boot camp, the remainder of my cigarette, the length of my intoxication, but the thing that strikes me most is the lack of stars on my horizon. Are they coming out for you tonight? Do they sparkle, dance, and dazzle you? Perhaps. They say what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, I can certainly attest to that. Once able to drown my sorrow with whiskey until his dreadful moans lessened and became nothing but joyful gurgles. But now a bottle and a half down, I only see strangers in arm's length.
Admiration only means anything if you agree with your soothsayers.  The one joy I've gotten from a stranger's observation was fleeting. "You have 'don't Fuck with me eyes'" I was told by a dominatrix while I was losing my mind at a crowded sex party in Chicago. She had eyes that told me Her Father hadn't given Her enough attention. After being locked up, running free sounds desirable. Boring sex. Palatable tastes are no longer regarded as valid.
I want nothing more than to be happy. What I need to be happy makes me miserable at the thought.

Past the Iris

Hunched over the green felt like a sniper, taking aim.

Stripes, Solids. Good or Evil.

It makes no difference. 

Calculated stares behind steel rimmed glasses and a handle bar mustache. 

The kind of mustache you'd picture God having. 

Pull, Push, and Release. Sunk. 

Another game, another drink.

Banter back and forth, wooden weapons in hand used to occasionally steady one's self. 

An amphetamine soul, chugging cigarette after cigarette.

Enamel grinds against enamel. 

Thousand. Yard. Stare. 

Sure, He's got the Girl.

But you've got.

You've got..

You've.. Got...

You've got something special. Man.

No, I mean it. 

Ten thousand drooping eye conversations into the morning regarding the secrets of the Universe

Cold and warm hands held until their temperatures match

Staring past the iris, into the soul

Claims of Love. Of heartbreak. Of Truth and Intention.

Anyone who has noticed my smile was definitely looking for it.

Demoralization

A generation that no longer watches pornography due to boredom

While video footage of car crashes,
Played over and over and once more in slow motion
(Twisted  metal. Pools of mixing auto and bodily fluids. Blood stained air bags. Silent onlookers.)
,Only satisfies through the teenage years

Hiding under the covers while under the influence
Running fingers over whiskey thin ribs
A prisoner idly playing with the bars on his cell

Tricks, Games, and Trains

The kids play games
Clack......Clack......Clack.
The kids get bored of suburbia and comfort and safety
Clack.....Clack.....Clack.
The kids in groups of four or five or six gather and hide behind false courage and grins
Clack....Clack....Clack.
The kids place their necks on the train tracks all together
Clack...Clack...Clack.
The kids see who can hold their skinny neck against the cold vibrating steel the longest
Clack..Clack..Clack.
The kids watch the light of the steady locomotive approach
Clack.Clack.Clack.
The kids follow the leader
ClackClackClack.
Young Men have died for less.

Memory

Under the radar is where it's most comfortable
Trouble differentiating between you making me sick
      or giving me butterflies
No true validation
Nothing behind the Money
No Justice behind the sentencing
In God we trust you'll fucking pay us back
Circulation in my body is poor, leaving my hands perpetually cold
The perfect excuse for "Hey, feel my hands. Aren't they freezing?"
Tricking my way into getting a glimpse of another's warmth

Memories are solidified by emotion
Episodes come back like getting the chills

Standing barefoot, grabbing pieces of grass with my tattooed toes, weeping gently to myself, trying to say goodbye to my Mother on that comfortable June day.

Moving back in time.

....Disbelief. Quickly followed by rage I'd not known I contained as I pounded on the steering wheel, yelling pleas and demands of Love in Your general direction. Hot tears ran down while the smell of a clove cigarette traveled out the window, A frigid newborn Winter traveling in.

Packing up and running away instead of post-coitus talk of admittance of guilt and forgiveness.

Emotion solidifies memory and my inability to cry these days assure me I'll remember and regret nothing.

Thin Air

Irony often lost on the majority while coincidence is mislabeled. Language, this tool we've created out of thin air, is constantly warping on it's own accord. Nothing is set in stone as the Mother's tears that fall on us all have shown us. Cleansing and resettling It all back to zero.

My Mistress, Spring.

The first moments of Spring waking from slumber start with her shaking the cold from her Womanly figure. Watch the bare branches quiver post-orgasm in the wind from the temperature/paradigm/pressure change. Still early in the morning, She and those with lesser eyes feel She isn't ready until her makeups on and leaves are on branches but I see her beauty regardless of circumstance and outfit. Spring is stirring from Her sleep. I kiss her eyelids, welcoming her to the light of a new day.

Sins of the Flesh

Drunk in a bar or Insane in an asylum
Passively be pacified
Systematic fellatio

Who determines what's greater or what's good for that fucking matter?

Brown eyes looking skyward, connecting with brown eyes that read nothing but pleasure
Lost in the moment if it wasn't for that muffled sound of needing air and a moment above the surface
A spasm before carnal death with eyes opened to those past sins of the flesh

Aesthetics

Whiskey stained whiskers.
The iron taste of blood sensed before opening eyes.
Cracked lips, the proof of dying from slow dehydration.

Obviously vascular with skin stretched over hard muscle.
It redeems all other sins of the flesh.

Ghost

The only patron sitting at a bar
A Ghost in a pre-neon city

Ghosts exist
I know because I am one
Shying away from the light of day
Silently occupying my space in a house of the living, while the others mill about
The sounds of talk and laughter and marital sex and television keeping me at bay

However
When the house resembles that of the dead;
I dance around merrily
Taking in the fruits of the living
Misplacing things purposely, leaving objects unspoken for

I am a Ghost
I go unseen, for I fear the judgement of living eyes

I grind my teeth and talk in my sleep,
But every other Woman in this town could tell you that.

Growing

Learning the land like a Lover's body.
Paved trails through the woods are museums to nature
Stand silent, surrounded by branches and all that which claims them and you'll see what Grand Central Station was modeled after

I often mistake that hollow feeling for a sense of Zen
Being empty is important
Being empty is being open

A cup must be filled up though so you can transfer that liquid
Water/Gold/Thought/Idea/Knowledge
Quench Someone's ill thirst

Empty has never been synonymous with serenity.
Constant transitioning along the paths we've chosen and continue to choose.

Backs to the Female, facing the Male

Zen for the price of a cab ride
When it's not an open bar but it's free to all with currency
Getting Women more drunk than they truly think
Plan B is in the back of my nicotine obsessed mind
A to B to C only makes sense
But what exactly is that?
The vibrations of humanity and disorder
Resonant frequencies
The drums beat into existence
Always walking a fine line between Zen and being numb

Pain and Pleasure

Female voices carry in a newborn spring breeze
They pass by me with briefness, like leaves continuing their journey to nowhere
A Woman with a voice that sounds like She's given a blow job or two in a movie theatre before

Our existence is a series of brief and fleeting moments
Episodes of coming and going
Leaving is easy but returning proves to be the more difficult action

A lot of people waste their time and life concerned and worrying about juvenile questions like:
"Is there a God?"
"Am I a good person?"
"Will I be happy twenty, thirty, forty years from today?"
These people don't see or know themselves, let alone what passes through their senses

There is no Right or Wrong
No Good and Bad
All that exists is Input and Output
Only Pain and Pleasure

Full Moon

On any night where the moon hangs low and full, there is an urge that pulls at some Men's hearts. Especially after a few drinks. A desire to leave society, run naked through the woods screaming for no other reason than being alive. An appetite to destroy themselves and anyone within arms reach. Figuratively or literally. The transformation is not physical, but still leaves one completely unrecognizable.  On any of these nights, look for the man with his gaze fixed upon the sky.
The next day in the shower the hot water hits the back of my head, where my neck and skull meet, soothing the remains of any primal intentions left over from the previous night. That "day after phlegm fueled cough" only a smoker knows begins and I discharge tar and mucus. Probably the most satisfying thing that I'll do all day. The hot water runs down my body, making me feel somewhat human again, while outside the bathroom window birds can be heard. Winter is coming to an end, listen to those birds. Washing my face, the stubble feels rough on my hands and reminds me that I'm no longer a boy but a grown Man. "Goddamnit act like it." I think to myself while trying to remember if I wronged anyone last night. I don't think so. Probably just took advantage of a sympathetic ear at the worst. Outside, the cigarette smoke travels through the air quickly as I puff away some of the headache. Listen to those birds. Watching some teenage kid deliver newspapers to the houses surrounding this one reminds me of doing the exact same thing as Her at that age. Walking through this neighborhood, delivering newspapers, listening to sad songs on my Ipod, thinking sad thoughts. I was damned from the beginning, but listen to those birds. Winter is coming to an end.

Within Arm's Reach

Let us toast to whoever's closest
Drink to our identical desolation
A centrifuge
Holding onto each other while the room spins around us
Exhale me from your mind's body when you can no longer take the suffocation

supernova

A dying star's last will and forced hand is to kill you too.
One final attention grabbing display of radiant desperation.
I will destroy entire plains of existence to gain your attention before my eventual downfall.

Life Imitating Art

Foot resting on the reflective pole lining beneath the bar, elbows planted firmly in front, posturing inward towards this fountain of youth counter-weight. This space that I rent for the price of a bottle is my own. The man next to me, eyes forward and baseball hat down seems to be in a similar situation. Close uninviting body language, but not in a hostile way, more of a remote and  non-relatable one. We share this unity in separation. Two distinct Islands off the coast of each other, longing for the mainland.
By about the fourth drink you start to no longer care that you're sitting at the bar by yourself, staring at the wall in front of you. Penetrating eyes mildly glazed over from a combination of boredom, booze, and tears. Staring past the brick into matter and waves, where they meet and disperse. Leaving me looking at everything and nothing all at once. The true artist has that sweet spot, the perfect balance of madness and brilliance. Mind the pulleys and weights carefully, a gallon of water weighs eight pounds and so does a gallon of Whiskey. Stay centered lest you run the risk of falling into complete insanity or staggering boredom. My essence becomes aware of itself hovering high above the bar and slowly drifts down, returning to be imprisoned in the slouching figure. Elbows planted in front. "A great exodus outside to smoke a cigarette is just the thing needed", I think while making my way through the smiling faces, having prolonged eye contact with them all causing their expressions to damper. Outside, the January air causes the hair on my rolled up shirtsleeve arms to stand on end. Eyes skyward, the north star focuses on me while I exhale and my soul drifts up as an offering to the Godless heavens.

To Have Loved and Lost

Baptized by a Lover's perspiring body
Once lost and shrouded in the darkness
The holy radiance shines through and blinds a man to all others
A lantern lost in the dark leaves the forest darker than if never lit up

Allegiance

"So are there any questions that you have for me?" The Petty Officer in full dress asked from behind his desk after his long winded speech about the benefits of joining the Navy. The scraggly bearded twenty something on the other side of the desk stares at his hands and then consciously in the Navy Man's eyes, answering back "Um.. Yeah. Is it a problem that I'm not at all patriotic?"
"Do you have a criminal record?" The flat top with a face shoots back without missing a beat but the slight twitch in his eye isn't unnoticeable.
The twenty something searches the question for any hidden meanings or tricks. Finally after a notable pause he answers back simply with, "No."
"Perfect."

I wish every woman who's heart I've played with could sit me down
Exhaust their soul and vocabulary to make things right with themselves
So I could whisper back at them " you do not matter "
After being hurt, you never let anyone you truly respect close to you
If you did they could let you down
But some simpleton could never break your heart

Absinthe

A false sense of lucidity, I see myself floating from room to room. Each location contains a different spectrum of me. Keep asking to go to the bar in one, poking fun at a friend continuously in another, while completely silent in some. The Green Fairy holds my hand and walks with me back and forth. Her skin is porcelain white I've always admired while her eyes are like a rolling meadow off in a place you've never been to but still long for. Her vague ferocity warms my belly and numbs my face and senses. Off to bed with Her, but She wakes after I'm deep in slumber. Going through my things, my books, my phone, my clothes. All the while continuously glancing over to my immobile body, weary of me gaining consciousness. I never do, passively trusting that her body is next to me keeping me company and keeping me warm. Waking up, I'm left to deal with the pains and headache by myself. All that She's left me is the proof of her previous presence and a feeling of abandonment. 

Truer Intentions

Producing and accepting positive vibrations in an endless continuation of a basic concept

The white hot center of the world, the music only gets louder the deeper you go

Precise antennae observing the cranial surface

A million delicate points and well hidden intention is reduced to animal desire

Mouth gaping; prepared to consume a Man's soul with ease

Eyes that have examined a Man's essence, Learned it and truly know it, only to give it back.

The ground swells beneath us and feeds as we feed.

Drift Away

Slowly digging into your consciousness and conscience 
An insignificant seed
Flourishing in infertile minds

An Island, An overused cliche, a concrete metaphor
Overheard second hand gossip of a dying generation in drunken corporate coffee shops
Burnt tongues and dead senses

Cut off from everyone, everything
Still caught in the web

Unfaithful to yourself
Unfaithful to myself
Lose your faith
Lose your mind
Lose yourself
Dead eyes and dead minds left limping in the three legged races of uncertainty

Feel the condensation on the glass and how it cools your skin.
How it  warms your body.
That slight push... Drift away.

Lies

I wish you wouldn't lie to me
Not because your non-truths themselves upset me
But how you poorly construct them
So transparent and poorly built
Are you even trying to deceive me or are you mocking me?

January Storms

The subtle sound of every tree withstanding that all encompassing push by our Mother Nature
Creaking and bending but never giving into her full will
Is this a test of strength or of allegiance?
The ground sucks up as much liquid as possible and is covered with the rest like a drunk showing off his limits and failing, too distracted to be embarrassed
The precipitation falls in many forms but like me, the Earth would never turn down a free drink

Water Coming Over the Hill

The day after the first substantial snowfall of the year. The ground grey and showing the lost beauty that is perverted so easily like a virgin raised in the church slurring her words in the bar on her 21st. The Woman, blonde, pulls up to the pharmacy in her white nondescript SUV. Her "The North Face" jacket is tight and accentuating her ageless body just how she likes it to. The tequila from last night is leaving her stomach unsettled and her general demeanor "a bit agitated". The conditions of the roads and the effect of them on her larger than necessary vehicle are the last thing on her Xanax hazed mind. Picking up her children (a boy and a girl, the perfect ages apart) and delivering them to their respective post-school events, the condition of her marriage that is sinking slowly from a place of distance to that of rage and misunderstanding, the AA meetings that her husband keeps suggesting and she keeps dodging. All these things weigh on her narrow minded psyche, making refilling her anti-anxiety medication just another slight annoyance. The speaker crackles out the effeminate voice of the drive thru pharmacist, relating instructions that the Woman in her SUV is already very familiar with. She goes through the necessary motions to accomplish her anticipated result, just as she does with every task. The intended outcome is reached, just as it always is. "Have a wonderful day!" crackles enthusiastically out of the machine in a way that you know you can't trust it being genuine. "Thanks, you too." She replies to the machine, face expressionless.

A deep calm, then crushing impact as long fingers and even longer nails dig into skin and draw responses of simultaneous pain and pleasure.
Wave upon wave, euphoria crashes upon the rocks.
The ebb and flow destroys and rebuilds my coastline of indifference.
The edge of the waters freeze over in the month of my birth but not substantial enough to support the weight of this stone I have for a heart.
Golden coastlines meant for holding bronze hands and kissing cracked red lips are all I long for in these grey times.

Auto Eroticism

Smoke gathers and hangs in substance fueled car rides like the mist surrounding Niagara falls while sad songs of yesterday fall upon non-present deaf ears.
Another bullet dodged, another chambered for tomorrow.
I used to say that nothing matters but the here and now.

I know this to be false. Nothing matters.

Dying like paint drying.  Waiting impatiently for the end and when it comes sooner than expected, you're stuck on the wall of an indifferent ever changing room.
Sideways glances from self obsessed Men caught up in the lust of auto-eroticism.
White knuckles grasping the gear shift like a Lover's hand while staring down the possibility of death.
Smoke gathers and escapes like so many Lovers of times not forgotten. 
Smoke gathers and clings tightly to my jacket also not unlike a former Lover.
Smoke gathers and dissipates while the red hot dynamo headache shatters upon the blacktop. 
A world created and destroyed just as quickly. 

Lost beneath the night sky once again
My eyes pointed towards the Earth
Down for the count I've got nothing
Once again
I'm rooting for myself
Against all odds and nobody cheers for me
All there is is myself
   All there is
Is myself
Fingertips brushing skin that has died off months ago but the memory is still there
As is the muscle memory, the visions, the familiar scents
I will die an incomplete man but all else will feel the sting of me leaving the depths of absolute
The self is all I am anymore