Young Liars (not featuring TV on the Radio)

 

If silence were golden

You’d be chipping your tooth on fool’s gold

then spitting your fillings into the collection plate again.

Caught doing it for the fourth time

this fiscal quarter.

A real blunder, this one.

The improprieties pile up on one another-leaning precarious, struggling to see over the edge, locked in a mothball-ridden closet.

Molding with the passage of time-

Still vintage.

If vintage were the wheels, catching fire from heated, seized calipers, the entire contraption falling off and rolling into the glamorous lake, the pride of our little slice of heaven.

And I’ll sit by and let the torn rubber and the chemical smell of spurned brakes choke out the fish in the water, seep into the drinking supply.

revenge-a measure of it-

Finally.

Gravity Rides Everything (not featuring Modest Mouse)

 

From a distant star

The flashbulb burning itself 

into the collective’s

knowing oblivion.

A blip and blop and click and sputter.

Morse in uneven distribution

of light’s focus.

Slipping into an inkwell.

Returning unblemished

Dipping again

Into an unknown.

Slept well

and

Shaken awake

At the whims of

Some unseen

dark-hearted puppeteer.

Boy in the Bubble (not featuring Paul Simon)

 

I’m a show pony

Rambling with incoherence and sweat and a directionless

chattering of my lips and teeth

slapping together

with the delirium of wisdom in a tighter space than

really should be allowed right about now

they’ll strap on my feedbag 

and send me out to the pasture

to put a pistol square on my forehead

and fire this bullet of confetti back into my brain

where I’ll dream of the range

before I was taken to be paraded

in front of the masses

shuffling and showing my gums

to check my value

against the barcode and the blue book

page

the one with the picture of me

smiling with a dead man’s grin

hugging the fence for dear life

and being so much more than they bargained for when they put the down payment on me slapped a harness on my back and corralled me with a whip and a chair to usher me out to the dusty trail

Late Registration (not featuring Known Anti-Semite Kanye West)

 All of the day

All day

Each

Moment

I am absorbed

In the clinking sound of the glass

Touching against my face

As I scream against the window

Full tilt. Belly on fire.

Even the water

Only fuels the 

Flames

In their search

For whatever remains

inside me.

Garden Song (not featuring Phoebe Bridgers)

Shake off the dew, vibrations hanging on the edges of the row of flowers. Sharp thorns running up the stem, something brittle-wooden. Uncanny in the ability to draw blood from incidental contact. Transgressions of passing.

Thorns squall around me. A Stretching color game from hell. Leaving my limbs with little purchase in their airspace. They wail in acknowledgement, unaccustomed to being denied this entitlement. 

Dug straight in from inside a well-hidden space, obscured by worn rock wall. My sullen form jitters-anticipation left to spoil.

The thorns collapse down, smelling the thrill of the hunt. I do my merit best to compress and contort away from their fall pattern. The edge of the raised, sharp-thornteeth.

New scratches and nominal droppings of blood smeared around my own edges, blots forming from my core outward. Constellations to color my form. A snarl denoting a victory across my face. I am made something uncommon. A new sense of whole. Known, smoothed out in the rush of emotion. A survivor, sipping the last few drops from the flowers. Thirst, trying to be quenched. 

Again

Time Placement

All my time

Spent

In fragments.

I could write it a love letter and throw it, without a bottle, into the ocean.

For all it is worth.

Churned by the white froth.

Wetted and torn by the elements.

Ink running deeper into the sea

In gobs

Distorted blots to poison the sea life.

Better to fold it up,

Into the perfect,

Well-manicured paper airplane

to toss from a great height.

Let the wind allow it to travel where it wishes.

Borne across the currents to a place where

Birds will tear the sentiments apart with beaks and beady black eyes.

Shit out my words on unsuspecting windshields

To be blasted away by bargain wiper fluid.

and to slip into the road.

Deep into our streams

and make the least of us

Vomit into the cold, night air.

In surprise, grasping our chests for relief.

What it amounts to in the end-

Always a poisoner,

and those who are poisoned.

Remote

We lost the remote again.

As a result, life has been stuck on the same infomercial.

-3 easy payments of 19.99

-No CODs

-Buy now get 3 free.

-Wait, there’s more…

How have we lived without it?

Whatever it is.

The world would never know,

Except we will always know

Because the confounded remote

has disappeared

into the vortex that is the couch,

Or the basement,

Or another dimension that is inaccessible to this mortal coil.

Meanwhile, here we are,

Ready to buy,

But waiting for the number 

to flash across the frozen screen.

Grip

Once a nagging pinch-

Becomes a claw, imbedded into the skin to the tune of pained wailings-

Becomes a forced tangle of the constellations; the slurring of celestial bodies-

Becomes a part, fused in place with various heats and adhesives, Accepted-

Becomes the whole of the thing itself. Complete.

Peace Unlimited

 

I want to paddle out to the middle of the lake and sit with my eyes closed,

The canoe paddle across my hips.

Let the water lap against the boat. Feel the breeze gather a small steam around me in the margins,

Note The sound of bird song, rambling and arrhythmic.

Allow it to slur together

The gentle flow of nature’s soundtrack

Attuned to nothing and everything washing over me.

Here I will breathe 

with reckless abandon

let my lungs know their depth,

satisfy a hunger they didn’t know they had.

Take a moment and admire the peace

of this place.

Then, after a centering sigh of relief, an acknowledgement of my place in the center of this lake, this moment, and the great mystery that is the cosmos, push forth a shattering wail from the core of my misery.

Let it smother the birds mid-warble and the gentle waves and watch as it sets fire to this tepid, pleasant body of water’s sense of harmony.

Shriek after shriek.

Full-throated endorsements of my torment,

in a rush like phlegm dislodged.

In the shape of fits and coughs and gags.

Wailing

Snotting

Pleading.

Until my point is made.

Mantra (Pitfall)

 You are the way you think you are.

Exactly that way. 

On a rope

Gripped tight—white knuckles

Tension sawing through the bone.

Seeking to loosen

attachments.

Fighting,

To stay suspended

In the space

Above

The snapping jaws

Of some ill-timed

convention for

half-starved crocodiles.

What you think,

you are.

Eventually.

Let the teeth

and the frenzy

rise up.

do the Lord’s work.

Leave the bones

Splitting at their ends

as a monument

to knowing

Thyself.

You

are,

you think

You.

The Devil’s Hand

 

Lift the arm

To accomplish basic tasks

And let the right hand 

Ignore what the left is doing.

Let it indulge its deepest desires

To claw a piece of happiness

from between the couch cushions

While the right scrounges for quarters

To buy another vape pen, turn the living room into the parlor of smoke where decisions are made.

Where futures are broken and sliced up and taken apart for fingernail filings.

Let the left feast on old, hard candy. A grape-turned-raisin. Forgotten indulgences.

A momentary taste of sweetness.

Before it is put to work.