the thought comes all at once or not at all
a memory of something I couldn't name if you asked me
I'm in the zoo, California
my nose is sunburned
I'm walking through corridors of land-marked heavy handed people
as I coast through all the exhibits of animals
I spend too much time looking at the barefoot lion in his melancholic stare and I recognize something in it
he knows me through the crowd, there's a link there that I cannot grasp
not then, not right away but it comes years later in a bad acid trip I spend my whole life trying to forget
I can tell there's fear in his cage and the flies won't stop pestering
I feel sick and keep walking never looking back as the screams of awe and amazement come from behind me
I was once in terra firma too
the boy with the long jaw and the empty library after school that had only the sound of books waiting to be opened
collecting dust among with them, but also gathering knowledge that I was unable to use because I wasn't smart enough
there's a bubble in my brain where it has shoveled all the facts I am able to keep unlike friends or attention
i was always losing everyone in grocery aisles, amusement park parking lots and train stations
the unbearable part was how easy it was
how gently things shifted and sank
there was a dog in our neighborhood that was always tied to a leash never leaving the front yard as if it was part of the lawn decoration
it was always angry and the sign above the fence said beware
until one day it wasn't outside anymore, the noise had stopped and settled leaving it's owner to pack it's things and go
when I asked what had happened he said it had bit him when untying him from his post, shock and in pain he was unable to chase after him
years later in a different city with a different name, I swore I saw that same dog in the street with a woman walking beside him but he wasn't angry, the eyes were soft and the growl had turned into a delicate yip
I'd like to think he was happy
I'd like to think that there are always ways out of the leash

I have found
That my most recent
Words of prayer
Constitute
The most basic
The most raw
The most desperate
Pleases and
I cannots

I cannot
I cannot
Please
I can't
I can't, Oh God,
Help me.

I can't...
Feel alive anymore.
My substance has evaporated
Leaving behind a love-empty shell
My waking hours are so consumed
By fires of what-ifs and whys
My sanity burning away
Thick black fumes of tears
Choking my already dying desire to see tomorrow
To live any moment of this
Pathetically tragic existence

"Why do we even feel?"
I find myself crying into
The much-too-sick-of-me
Green woven prayer mat
Why do we feel
Why do I feel?
When all my emotions are inherently
Corrupt
Why do I feel if I'm not entitled to these emotions?

The wrath and anger
The injustice of it all sears into my skin
Burning flesh
Before it softens into grief
A shred of understanding
Grief, pain, sorrow
Hugging the bones of my ribcage
Trying or attempting
And failing so miserably
To contain the consuming pain

White hot flashes of pain
Washing over me like volcanic waves
Dissociating my un-alive personality
Going about the motions of my daily life
With unconscious duty towards
The important elements

There's no path leading back
I've taken it apart
One spoonful of earth at a time
Its gone
Sometimes, I see a glimmer
And I'm bestowed with false hope
Sweet hope
That maybe, perhaps
Just maybe
Mayhaps
Things will be okay


But they wont, not tonight
Not for a long time
Not forever
Never

She shrugged her tired shoulders
"I'm gone", she smiled sadly.

I am gone.

Rest is hard for a heavy heart

can you hold it in your palm? I can't stop talking about hands.
I don't remember the last time any other body part was that important but the one that slept next to you out of necessity instead of loneliness.
There's a problem, like a rock skipping into my neighbor's pool but it's not my neighborhood and none of the houses remind me of home. A solitary moment shrinking in shrubs when you know that the cars are passing by and you have no idea what direction anyone's going. Where's the destination and will they get there like you?
Muddy lawns and soaking sidewalks is everywhere you've ever been but you don't talk much about that anymore. Some kind of selective mutism that gripped you when you were too young to make decisions, just a bad joke played well on yourself. Drifting from window to window to see if my fingerprints stay there, if the future will break down the door and trip me with shoelaces that were worn by me or my best friend or by nobody and I think I'll understand then the most significant rule, you can't be in two places at once.

What an insidious dance among your
tone teeth and tongue. Words not formed to be heard, just flashing the flags you claim.

All actors acting the leads in roles of plays they don’t write.

Moving tongues become obsolete on stages build in concrete.
And as I watch
I wait
I listen for those words of choice to sound less like a noise and more like voice.

The breakfast chaos theory comes quickly and with no aforementioned warning. A hell in your stomach like an ulcer with hands now kneading your internal organs into bread or maybe as a precursor for the causalities of a lonely afternoon or boisterous night, no one ever knows. Suddenly the birds make eye contact with you and you are not the center of your gravity, your universe; your mouth is a beat off to your voice as if buffering, but why would it slow down? No physics to that but it's intangible.
Just a school of thought, food for thought. Sipping your stale coffee from the same mug you use every day because sometimes he say " I lose you in between conversations, as if you're not there. Where do you go? what are you thinking? why do you never visit? why is everything a plea? why is it always getting further with you instead of closer. closer. closer." and i can't answer that because I learned from the best and besides I wasn't listening. But I was, I am.
The breakfast chaos theory comes too soon; always hovering, asking of you to stop being that deserted home department store. Aisles of the same fun-house colors: green and yellow or red and white. It's a worldly thing, I think. An anomaly you weren't supposed to expect but now you have and everything has gone moldy.

the sun is my king and sometimes it asks me
what i'm doing down here on earth
i can't help but explain that everything has it's place and there are certain rules you cannot bend
i consistently want to have a ****** job wherein it slowly melts my spirits but not really
what i really want is nothing by the sea
doesn't matter which one
where i can pray into the sand
where someone asks
who are you? what are you doing?
and i can tell them
at ease, at ease
like that cowboy i remember from my childhood
this is me at my most degenerate
at my most free
but you wouldn't know
except the sun king and I

drive from the west coast and then follow yourself down into the south where the cactus mock trees out of their leaves and this is love
memories unglued and being put away into a box for the next move
and there's always a next move
a bluish shadow in the morning gripping the frozen wheel and it won't will to your commands and as you get out your shoe becomes untied with the motion of gravity? you can't say anymore nor that you could before
every day slips into your back pocket so when you lie down you have something to fall back into, so you can look at all you've done and smile "i love repetition" you cry
you repeat it so much you believe it as your eyes close
no one's there when you wake up but you didn't expect anyone to be
they say you should've been a songwriter they say you should've shoved all your hurt into the bottom of a well because it's no use inside yourself they say a lot of things
one day you're going to drive back up the coast and retrace where things went missing, where things went out like a broken taillight or a lost conscience
you're gonna find it and then the writing will stop

i feel like a tight string stretching or pulling
at times just going
into a single direction but the horizon isn't clear because
i'm watching everything from my peripheral (turn around)
days when i stay awake too long and my head begins to move around shakily, unsure and always unassuming
inside my head the dazed knife seizures into little misfires that guide my hands (hold them)
like in those Saturday cartoons when a finger is pinched between an electrical socket and the entire body turns into static, like a lightning bolt personified
but this is real life and what seems so pleasant sometimes leaves my tongue blue, like too much color
too much starch, saturated until your eyes water
and you have to walk away
your back was always the most beautiful to me
but i follow because this is what you do
because this is what i do
because i know you'll always turn around

sometimes i can smell gasoline
i can be familiar with the routine, an everyday
i could be here every day

my lips stick together
i step out but i'm back inside
there's an uncanny i'm waiting for
but i think we're the aliens we're waiting for
yeah, i think we're the aliens we keep waiting for

can it last forever?
life hasn't been the same since i found out that bees have threesomes and there are two kinds of males but only one kind of female
all the light from stars that we can see are probably dead
floating to make the next big thing
like the small of your back
or the twitch on that someone you're so in love with

everything is under the dirt
cosmic divorce
i'm afraid that we don't know what god looks like
and that he's haunting me in my sleep
waiting in every half-open door to jump out and say
this is it
come
back
to
me