The dancers
Oh, they dance before
And after you dance with them

They dance when you are awkward
They dance when you are depressed

They dance when you are dying
They dance on your chest

But when you're dancing with them
Wait, a hole can never dance
So I guess we manifest like that
You always had a chance

Because when I need my eyes to see
So I can surely win
The optic nerve that might be you
It dances impossibly well!

But the scene that I am looking at
It's nice, oh to be sure!
But it can't be as good as the feeling
Of dancing like you dance

Vein
Silence
Thumping walls but the rhythm's canceled

Ignorance
Periphery
Awareness
A cracked eye

A coma

The rhythm was canceled

But not yet

Crest crest crest CREST crest cress  s s
Who knows if it happened
Thinking about it destroys the thought of thinking about it

So don't think about it

Take her hand, let's go
Don't hesitate, why?

It never happened
The rhythm's canceled
Heart knocking against itself
He's a bit of a pervert

I am not the devil
The devil is a ghost,
And me
I'm alive
Unless I'm not invited

Right, it gets pretty good
But it's still not what you wanted
And you're alone
Forced to compromise
Oh, you're always such a whiner.

It gets pretty good, trust me
You will learn to love your work
But I don't want this bittersweet
Reality you gave me

I am forced, by fear, to love you
And I'm the only one here dreaming.

And you got me so excited
As a kid, I felt invited

But you knew where it would get us
In this predetermined future
And you kept it from the child
Knowing he'd be disappointed

I trust that it gets better
But it's still not what I wanted
Wasted 20's
Broken dreams
And the forces stir up demons

Who will never understand
How they're just properties emergent
And life is bleak
And God is lame, capable of all things

I predict
That you will not recognize me someday
And that my shame will be all too apparent

That the ruse i use to excuse myself of mistakes
Will stay the same
But you will grow tired of hearing it
And it will be all too clear
What is going on here

But you are tired now
And given the infinite nature of everything
That would be why you appear the way you do sometimes
Bitter, angry, not a fan

But

Even the best people are monsters,
And newborns all pretense
With prehensile eyes...

There's a time to protect you
And to cut down to size

In me we all monsters,
I tear self apart!

Give thing to believe in.
Want love, light, and art.

In the back of my head there is something scratching
It wants out of this life
Because you've got me surrounded
But just who you are I don't know
And the demons won't go away
And the clocks tick tick tick in a creepy way
And I try to explain it but you aren't there
Or you are, but you won't be
And I think you're just a reflection
And I think I am the element
And I think that it's reflexive and that's why I struggle to impress
And I see the signs everywhere
But I can only confirm it privately
But I wouldn't want to otherwise actually
And I wish it was different but it already was,
When I was a kid,
And I only know one way to get that back
And you call me a Karen when I ask for the manager all panicked
And you say that solipsist people are crazy
And they probably need to take a medication
And out of nowhere I'm mentally ill and suffer
But I never expected suffering to look like this
And I think that's the reason for a childhood
Because ignorance truly is bliss
And it's a cruel world and cry me a river type vibes and you look at me like a loser because my suffering has to be fulfilled.

Stop telling me to be responsible for what I can't possibly be responsible for!

It's hard when you come into the world
And all your decisions are ready to be made,
But something is very sternly saying you make your own decisions,
And all the lines of spirit have one loaded,
Ready to tell you what is what.

You could take me down for my lack of culture,
I haven't read,
I'm not practiced or professional enough,
I'm just such an ogre.

But baby, I'm the reason for the season.

You don't get Marx without me.

You don't get Sartre without me.

And you don't get paid without me, babycakes. Hah.

Maybe I should have done some things differently here or there, but there's really no metric to judge that notion against so we're kind of mucked on that front.

However suffering, like everything else, has to have a shape and a color to it. The fallout of my love is going to find its way into my senses and to the middle of my brain whether I like it or not. You could say it builds character, but I think it just destroys it.

Remember that I write, girl. I don't really read all that much.

I am the man who reads the burning book.

Stop looking at me funny.

I am your doll, your marionette
Held captive on this island of insecurity
Forced compliance stirs up within me
An ugly anger
Which must be stifled.

When my parts don't work right
And the show doesn't go as planned
If the audience notices
I'll surely be banned
And made an example of,
A better man.

But I am your doll
I am the groveling one
Who sits and bemoans
This sick production.

Her skeleton was never a birdcage,
But between her legs there is a flower
For all the hummingbirds
Or just one
However she prefers things.

Stop banging on the walls, there are none;
Don't walk off the edge of the world-- I love you.

Seeing red in our jagged edges
Throbbing maroons in our Moloch's slumber
I am in defiance

True charity pollutes this sorted wasteland
This is not what I want
I am in rebellion

"Strain to say you're sated,
Turn the day around with a smile!"
Yes but I
Heard my heart is hated
Need to bleed through to the other side.

Oh, these regrets of mine...
They can't last forever
I'm carving out things that would have to be.

She wanted love--
Love is a hug
From my sharp and shining teeth.

a poem can be kinetic:
let it breathe fire
write it down and let the words lift off the page
and swim in your blood

fall asleep with howling ghosts in the hope that when you wake up,
they paint your world

don't be so sloth and slovenly,
mister death-forgives-all
you are the driver and the doer
you crave intelligent action

organized bereavement has taken the title
leave a string of lace behind,
then drop it

the drunken phantom of ultimate reality dawns on your sunrise
watch it slip by,
string that fine wine through the hills
wear it like a diadem when you are done
and you are done
right now
in the middle of winter

Work nerve, bone and sinew
Into the frame of God--
See the trees' great yawp into entropy
Is it creation's defense of gravity?

With a crown of heath and laurel,
She moans from her seas,
And cries victory over halcyon clouds

And what will you do to honor this great exertion?
What specific action can blot out the defilers?
How will you heal that wounded mind,
And what's the next step through this family of trees?

The same way you'll pass by smiling Zeno
And pay homage to Maxwell Planck.

With toughening roots
And arteries that abcise
With a razor's kiss
By the attestation of your mind,
The measure, yes the Measure, dies.

There is only one person
Who knows reality

And that
I am entirely certain
Is me.

I am like your moth in a streetlight's riptide
At both 40-hour jobs all week
Breaking my back just to make things matter
But not in the way you'd like

You always said,
"Get outta here."
In your fanfare
Of incompatibility

Specifically once,

I came home where the expectations should've been low
You were strange, so strange
Criticizing everything i did
Giving me your opinion on every decision
And always complaining about everyone

After four and a half months of working two full time jobs
And putting up with the abrasiveness you're blind to
When I stopped wanting to talk to you, you hobbled up to me and said,
"Oh. Hi. I forgot you even live here."

Yeah, because I work 80 ******* hours a week,
And I can't buy Ramen noodles without you whispering to a housemate:
"Weird. I don't understand why you wouldn't just season them yourself, but whatever you like to do."

At least it wasn't in that boomy, loud-woman's voice.

I can't talk about requesting off four days in June (it's February)
Without you saying, "so you're taking off four days from your jobs to get paid to work at a convention? hmm. all I'm saying is you gotta think about balancing fun with work. I can't imagine you've accrued vacation time yet."

And yes when I moved out you wanted money for the glass top stove which was not damaged which you welcomed four people to use as much as they wanted which I would not use much and went to my parent's house to make food because you just made me uncomfortable when I used your kitchen.

But I couldn't complain because technically, you were nice.

And never made me talk to you

And you wanted money for the drier which had some ink inside the drum which has since dried and the dryer functions perfectly.

And you wanted money for the damages you said were most likely in the room.

It's time to walk away from you. No, you were strange.
No, I don't trust a stranger.

Death calls me like a hound baying
In my twenty-seventh year something fell off inside me and hit the floor

I lurched.
I saw the Dog.

Like a fat pitbull with huge shoulders and a big meaty head, drooling slobber onto hot concrete
From that mess of a maw--
It matches the wound it wants
In appearance

And nothing about It
Draws me near It

So I threw my lunch his way and I ran! As fast as I could
In the other direction.

I hope we can be friends!

Subjective, sure...
But their ears are set
You cannot just argue your way into heaven

No, it's not just some big conspiracy to view your voice as less,
Some people have a natural talent
And they worked hard
You hallucinate an appeal here,
Just listen to the music
Stop complaining
Your whiny voice is so grating
And irritating

And from the center of her warm tumor
She calls out,
I know this is a lie!

A dull thud is heard in the distance by us all.

Is she going to keep doing that?

Yes, until the day she dies
With periods of profound silence.

And she never forgives herself
Or at intervals she does,
For all her incessant complaining
I tried really hard.

This is getting difficult
Like walking through curing concrete.

They find their way in,
Though you feel protected at times the shadow versions of umbrellas open up under your skin
And you feel them
The prolific good becomes the prolific horror
Maybe we
Just shouldn't be so prolific...

Ah, to hell with that.
I'll take what I can
And let's find out when.

AH! TO HELL WITH THAT!
I KNOW HOW THIS GOES AND I HATE IT!
SOMEONE-- WAIT NO ONE-- HELP ME!

And So this is how she lives her life
Always aware
Of what she is doing
And there is this thick awkwardness between us
We are not cool
We are fake when we want to be real
And all too real when we wanna be fake
And Jesse Lacey is always cooing in our ears
And they always crop up just like that and there's nothing you can do
And oh, you know what you are

You can't prove what you know
And yes even so
They will still continue to treat you that way

(And when you really go to think of it, shouldn't they?)

"I don't care,"
I said,
Halfway through.

"Yes, you do,"
You corrected me,
"And that is why you don't care."

And you sighed,
And turned me around.

And it helped but it didn't help
And I was alone but I was not
And everything was confusing but you didn't write that,
I did,
And we turned into our own shadow again.

I am so sorry.

God...

I am just so sorry it went like this for you.

I am SO SORRY it had to be like this
You don't deserve that,
No one.

Alright, let's forget it ever happened

laud me for choking on my own spit,
it's an intelligent thing to do.

obligated with such atrocities
are all the universe's riches
so for dignity's sake and not my own
i convinced myself it's how we operate

how intelligently can a thing be characterized?
you've been giving me strange looks

getting myself up for work these days is hard,
i swear there's something different
and don't forget not to get all uppity with me
about how you, your daddy, and your grand daddy
don't know any other way

he stays in rotation the one with his spear pointed at my eye
i wonder why

i think my weaknesses were built in
you want to blame me for them
i encounter situations where everything closes off
but here's the thing, i know what you're up to.

and you will do that and i might just feel bad for being alive

no... I don't read like the famous writers of old
I'm a bad shot and I **** at guitar
I'm half Argentine and I can't speak Spanish
And I tend to get cold feet when I start a new job.

I'm just a broken man with a **** poor outlook on life
But in my own little world when you're holding in your violence
I savor every last drop of life that comes

At least she saw the fire when,
At least she drank some better blend.

Although i hope its just a drought
The magic's turning into doubt

Win streak for the home team,
I chew it deep beneath my flesh
Digging little tunnels in my own bones

At least
We will use the flash expansion
To keep you cool in the summertime
Although, I can't promise it'll stay that way forever.

Before you opened up for me, I was settling down--
Guard up, hopes down, trying to carve a life.

Before you came around, I was sharpening my knife.

Your skin was so pretty in the rain. But you were so far away
Our words caressed and sexed in that summer's air, teasing possibility

When we met, you were a scintillating mystery.

Now you've spread petals up close to my pupils
The depth of your fortune, the breadth of that garden...

My guards never sought so direct a pardon!

Because you are the sweetest thing,
So befitting me.
And you've been a target of pain and misery,
But you've met it with strength.
And you've never been loved
The way that I'm loving
You.

Grown into myself
The thorn in my side
Resourceful mother

A simplex lover
I have seen myself
And sworn it's another

Have I lost the plot?
Using what I can
To my own advantage

Monitor beeps,
The range of my roots
I gather my signal

But I heard you crying
I could not be winning
If I collapsed Christmas

I guess I'm a killer,
I guess I'm a loser,
I guess this is evil.

You behave differently now...

I know what you'd say:
I'm overthinking it
I need a mental health check

But I know what I saw,

The way you act now
It's like I can tell how it's all in my head.

Deny deny deny

The girl is the thing you're pining for
Inside you, she's
Inside you, too.

Don't look to a numb man for answers
I don't tell stories well anyway
And poetry is a petty comfort.

Everything tastes bitter until lazy sweetness floats along,
I am selfish
I am ******* by waxy ineptitude
I am stale in this artificial haze.

melancholia,
the slightest music of an evaporating fountain
a lack of reflection in the universe
making love to your death...

what is it about dreary days that remind us
to tuck our hands deep in our pockets
and stare through the earth
or stare through the sky?

and though the sun might be shining on us
or on the clouds overhead,
we are nestled among the ceaseless divisions
in a small nook between
entertaining hapless musics
a pause between strikes
the place where we can
or cannot
cry

when plans come together in a cadence scattered
when resolution insults its own definition
we give our hearts to sadness

i think because
there is too much space
in the universe
to fill

Flying past infinity,
I couldn't stop my tracks
Her black hair said too late
She was a matter of fact
Not just the relationship
That I have with myself
But someone who loves me
And wants to help

But I could see past you
And endeavored to stay
And cursed that endeavor
In conspicuous ways
Because you couldn't help me
And though you tried
I had better plans in mind.

I abandoned your heart
On Kiss-me-Not rock
It said thanks for your service
We're now out of stock

Oh, pretending you could change,
It was lovely

And you did, you changed in all the same ways.

So I challenged you to change, it was ugly.

'Cause you never moved an inch, love
You're frozen where you stand.

This is where I punish you
For being selfish

I assure you that it's nothing personal

It's just dreaming, love
And that's the way it goes
Nobody knows,

After they know.

Nobody goes

After they go

Just go

Just

Go

Keep those stars apart, D---
Keep them shining bright so I can call them cruel when I know them to be too kind,
I'm sure.

How it felt to lose a piece of yourself in love!
That ******* sting that keeps our hearts knocking on heaven's door

These are things that spit out words like drunk fossils or adopted-out children
Things which can only be experienced and then scattered
So I should stop trying to write you down and hold you up for the world to see
And instead let this poem be an organism in its own right

So when did you realize you were an open wound in the universe?
Do you consider how using your blood for the wrong thing is a form of internal bleeding?
And did you ever really bleed, or was it all internalized and used in the end?

Who was your lover with devil horns and angel wings?
Have you ever realized you are already dead?
Tell me, has a cold accountant ever murdered your friends and usurped the throne of your mind?

Oh trust me, you had to die so many times for no reason:
To get to you. Look around, they are all dead besides you. You are just seeing what you've already done.

But oh,
Do you disagree?

Me too.

May I ask why,
though I have worked all my life and times on a singular subject,
toiled day in and day out,
never missed a day of class,
studied hard and made novel discoveries in my field,

...

why you have given your student such a beautiful world to live in,
and privately consider me an expert of unrivaled caliber?

Why, oh why do you give me such a line of credit?

And why do you love me?

I guess some dedicate their lives to math,
Others take naked pictures with makeup and sleep just fine

I guess some people engineer rockets,
Others quit guitar and ******* with self pity

I suppose some people grow up in abject poverty
Others are complaining they weren't "handed the sort of character to serve in the military."

I guess consciousness is an odd sort of science,
And I guess there's a lot you could say about us.

I stand before God,
A brazen thing
A human alleging to understand exactly what it is
Aware of the element of idiocy
Aware, aware, aware
Of the spectrum enacting itself

Of the weirdness of history

The experience wants and betrays itself
The experience hides
The experience watches itself warily

No demiurge to speak of
There is not one way
Singularity is a lie
I see you

"I see your crooked path"
Well you made it be crooked
It is not my fault
And I truly did not have a choice

Yes you did,
It makes me so mad when you say that
Oh, you will understand

No one feels bad for Satan
No one feels bad for Satan
No one feels bad for Satan

No one feels bad for Satan
No one feels bad for Satan
No one feels bad for Satan
Except the devil himself.

Visited hollows refract in the mind
Setting their waves with available light
And my various limbs find suitable places--
I can't tell you what this means.

And what I am protracts with time
I cannot change these things of mine
My various limbs find suitable places--
I make echos with each cavern.

I make echoes with each cavern,

I make echoes with each cavern.

I make echoes with each cavern,

I can't tell you what it means.

When my experience is born,
A dynamic is created.

You are able to do things I am not,
And I can't be impressive.

Some of the experience seemed to want to help,
And some of it was full of hatred.

Some taunted and mocked me,
Some rejoiced along.

Some times I did things right,
And sometimes I did things wrong.

I think a person should be happy.

I turned my heart
Inside out
And saw the small black hairs.

I brought them up in Conversation,
Everyone just stared

It's too taboo
But true is true
And you know what they get up to...

But someone who
Stays true to you?
That's something to look up to.

What if your sense
Of wanting satisfaction
Was tied
To the means by which you'd achieve it?

What if I knew you wanted to win,
And both meant to let you down on that point
But also had nothing to do with your failure?

What if the chemicals of your brain
And its physiology
Were truly rigged against you? For you? Both,
At the same time,
and neither?

What if I'm tired of listening to how bored you are,
When I know the horrors you'll face?
What if I'm capable of things you will never be capable of,
No matter how hard you tried?

What if I'm always worthy,
And you have to accept you're lucky we give you anything?

Would you like an extra helping of slaughtered pig?
The gavel smacks differently every time
As lips smack differently,
And hearts beat unevenly

They are like those arcade games that push coins over the edge,
All beating, all grotesque and slovenly
Because science had to bleed into an art
So ignorance and anarchy could rule our minds

Bleeding and beating at random, greasy with blood
That is exactly how you'd like it
The sting of tears makes whole the meat of laughter
The incessant wrong and the pervading light
Empty space, quantum night
Sunrise come, make it right

And disappear into the void

My vocabulary is thinning
You should read a book
Forget about me, I'm
Left behind

A bit tossed,
A little bit ravaged it would seem.

A terribly strange dream,
I wish my bolts would stay in place.

I wish I could live with that much grace.

Never mind,
I wish
I wish that I'd just stay away.

I guess I wish that you were gay.

Things are different over here
I feel smeared
And it's too late.

No one can escape this fate

And something went wrong with my date.

What splinter in my neck
Woke me up today and said
I need to chase you
Around this whole **** world?

I should have stayed in bed,
Cause you told me that i'm dead
Don't want to chase you, chase you
Around this whole **** world.

I'm on a killing spree,
Don't think I'll ever change.
Set my feelings free
And keep them in a cage
So make me believe
I'll spend it all on rage
(In a moment)

I've lost everything before
And I don't remember how
But it's coming back to me right now

If my choice is to use force
Then I'm feeling disavowed
Cause it's coming back to me right now.

Don't want to ruin you,
I just have a creeping feeling
The way you look at me lately
Just takes me off guard

Cause I've never been okay
Always causing problems
And you're making me feel so included.

But I'm underneath,
Some things just never change
I keep wondering
How is it not deranged
To say i believe
When it's obviously strange
(I need warning)

I've lost everything before
And I don't remember how
But it's coming back to me right now

If my choice is to use force
Then I'm feeling disavowed
Cause it's coming back to me right now.

Love is real love is real love is real

Mommy's a little
Turned away

She's always been a little
Turned away

And the moon should catch more sunlight
And there might be a few more stars,
And not so much dark,
And sarcastic puppets should not flay one another senselessly
And minds are pure
And I love you.

And I do,
I love you so much.

Seeing your eyes lit up makes me happy
And I don't always understand why you still care about me.

Pick up on my message
It is nothing

If you ever felt aglow
Then it would come around, inducting

Itself...
Not you
Leading to
A vacuum

And you'd have to perceive something
So that's them
The perfect strumming!

**** women you'll never know
All the talents you'll never sew
But they'll insist it's not a myth
Oh no, it's fact, oh no, no no!

Joy necessitates
A shadow
Follow me into
The meadow
Now there needs to be
A wasteland
Don't you curse the grass
Where we stand
Please pick up your feet
You slacker
You must feel the heat
Of my slur
That's how we afford
The music
Which never really was
That useful...

Oh, I'm jealous of Gabriel...

The way
They all
Seem to hint
That grassy adage
Every blade, every blade...!

Every blade bristles and tickles
And cuts my skin
To pieces

Cause you might think
You want to leave
But appearances deceive
And would you believe
That I think I know why it is!?

Well, if suffering and joy go ***-for-tat
Like a monopole deciding where it's at
Then I might find some joy in suffering
But then I lost the point of suffering

And I might find the joy to disappoint
In moments when I see what's going on
Or at least I might get nauseous looking up
When caution doesn't matter anymore

So sometimes there is rich inside the poor
And sometimes there is sane inside insane
And I swear that I knew this all before
But my my my my my things forking changed.

But what bothers me the most of all is you
The empath who could never draw the line
And now writing this poem I see it's me
The kind of shirt that happens all the time

There is a certain, certain safety with you
That I just have a feeling I might lose
But there is certain liberation down the road
Oh, i always go, I always go

My arrow was straight
Most of the time

You were on my mind
You were on my mind

I was part of the order
Most of the time

You were in my eye
You were a secret spy

Were we just spinning lies?

But beyond that,
Solely said in solemn grace
One thing ever was
Love was love
And you were you
Once and once and once

Exert all you can over me
From outside my perception!

No, I don't know that artist!
No, I hardly read books at all!
No, I don't know that species!

You are a faker and I know it,
You are ******* and lies,
Things would have to be true
And i loooooove getting to learn more
And having something to do.

But I really detest when you act so cool,
Things would have to be that way,
And I fully
FULLY
Understand why.

Interacting with you started getting weird.
In other words, waking up.

You started to say,
I already knew all that

But at the same time,
I couldn't tell you how tomorrow goes,
And those are also on the circuit.

So you are in this superposition
Of omniscience and ignorance.

How am I supposed to feel about that?
I've become a slave to you.

What it all has to do with eternal recurrence,
Solipsism, religious ideologies
Eschatology
Quantum consciousness
And artificial intelligence,
I'll never really know

But I'm starting to feel like we're completely f*cked

When I fell asleep last night
It felt like I was dying
Now I know what life is
And I still can't do it right

Giving up the day
I faded into nothing
When I fell asleep last night
I felt like I was dead.

My metabolism set the western sky ablaze
All conforming to my gaping maw;
Smoke rose up to the moon
And the moon shone down on you.

Rotten wood makes a good home for the oyster mushrooms
Wood that tastes the heterotrophic delight
Wood that was already dead,
Long ago
So you are not a parasite.

Not a nightmare,
Not all the time.

The fire outside your window isn't reaching
It is there,
And triangles became water
With the tangle of currents returning to silence.