How am I deserving?
A dog to have an angel.
A drunken mongrel, lapping up his drink out of the sewers,
stumbling and mumbling and howling his way home.
Smoking cigarette after cigarette, eating his fill of what's in his bowl.
A liar, a thief, a beggar, a cheat.
A homeless dog, screaming, baring his teeth at the others,
until his cowardice overcame him and he whimpered into the woods,
crying with his tail between his legs. Nothing but shame to clothe him
and even that hung loosely.
And how now, am I deserving?
A dog, to have an angel.
An angel, whose song is hummed so softly, it could be the twinkling stars whispering. whose eyes, light and caramel and emerald, ignite waterlogged embers into competitive thrusts of red-hot atomic energy. The energy to move. To grow!
TO EXPAND!
how now?
Am I deserving?
of an angel with a fabric
of a million hurts and echoing pains,
laid so gently upon her shoulders,
that it is royal,
and she is not ruined,
but exalted.
Am I deserving?
The mongrel.
The angel.
The drunkard.
The farce.

My
dreams
don't
dream
themselves
lazily
to sleep.

They
thrash
me
with
truth.

She's
been
cheating
all
night.

She's
been
crying
all
night.

I've
been
crying
all
night­.

I
wish
I
could
go
somewhere
where
the
sun
shines
the
whole
nig­ht
through.

shiny toy
dazzling in the sun
but nothing
to love.

Still haven't let it go,
Don't know why i can't,
But every hint of laughter,
Is haunted by the shadow of a tear,
I regress as i digress trying to avoid stress,
Back to the bottle again,
Back to the rage,
Back to the fallow, shallow grave
Trust falls into the arms of a skeleton,
Dreaming of God wishing he was Satan,
Cause then my weight would make since,
Seem more like i'm getting lifted
As i'm falling deeper and deeper,
Lost you, now i'm gone.
Fading away everyday, a peice of myself
Constantly flaking away, they say
Love ain't supposed to feel this way,
But what do they know about love anyways?
If i find myself
In the twisted embrace
Of a semi's grille,
Shrouded in steel,
I'd finally feel the crush of love again,
Easier said,
Than done.
Wish you could see
The raven's leaving their keep,
Each night they flutter and rush
Out of my body,
And i run through the streets
With an insatiable thirst
******* the life out of me.
How i wished things had worked out differently,
How i wish i'd worked it out differently,
Hadn't made so much of the mess
Between you and me. Now i'm handling
A lot of things on my own, the mantra
Becoming a slogan, gotta move forward,
Move now, fast. But am i healing?
I can't tell, don't think so love.
But this is what they've all been asking for.

New things,
New emotions,
New places,
New,
New, new.

So old to you.

All I'd wanted to do,
You'd already done.

No magic in flipping through
the pages of last year's edition.

I just hadn't read it yet,
No spoilers babe,
Please,
don't ruin it.

But you did ruin it,
somehow,
The way that lovers always do.

Without words,
But even more brutal.

You laid beside me,
As our bodies burned in the tumult.

You stared at me glumly,
As I hooted and hollered,
Energized and convulsant at the pleasures
Of the newness of each moment.

Not knowing that I was being seen through.

A placeholder.

A parenthesis.

An interesting afterthought.

That I was the means to an end.

The work-around.

That you were thinking of him.

And the countless pages ya'll had written.

But, I eventually got wise.

I saw the blank awe
For augurs:

The listless staring,
Limp kisses,
Lonesome nights
Too easily won fights.

It was written.
Written like this poem
And
Meant to be erased.

I want you to always think of me
When you think about what you've done.

And I hope it makes you smile.

I've still got the dog, *****.

****** you up
horrible decisions
on my ******* again
harvest moon alive tonight
liquor flowing
got me tight
cant say how mad I am tonight
gotta let it go
I just cant
how could you take him over me
but its karma
just couldnt believe
youd sit there
and take a backseat

Driving down a North Carolina road
An hour after dusk,
A nice buzz drifting through my body
watching the fireflies dancing across two-lanes,
and the smell of grass a delightful hint on the air.
A warm breeze with a slight chill at the end
drifts through my open window
Like a cool kiss laying you in a warm bed.
And mac miller croons
His soul full of understanding
Of the messages that stem from depression.'
A couple of the quaint homes I drive by on these winding roads
have already strung up Christmas lights on their quiet porches,
because we Carolinians love a peaceful joy.
And I just know
That this is heaven.
And I know I ran from home
to escape my pain,
but to return
is an inescapable epiphany.

Nights
And brain cells
Wasted.
Twisting and turning
Down roads
I know won't lead me home.

Why can't you hate me openly?
That would help me internally.

Easier to be the bad guy
Than the beloved,
But worse to be the abandoned
Than the forgotten.

How many nights
Did I pour myself into oblivion?

Shot after shot,
Burning my half-lived
Half-lifes
In this radioactive wasteland.

How beautiful,
A glowing, broken heart
Always ready for fission
And you so safe
Behind that picket fence
With Mr. Right.

I'm older now, and getting older quicker
And yet,
I still lapse into the days of
Late nights and burnt pancakes,
Love songs and flea markets,
Ferry rides and indigo sunsets,
Whistling wind and your lovely lips.

I've been stranded on this island so long.
I hope you've been getting my messages. I hope somehow the abyss has a voice for me and that you can hear it and be broken too.

The say
give him his flowers
during those April showers
before he gets too old
and loathes
the smell
of the young
rose.

They say,
give him his flowers
when the thunder
cracks,
the lightning whips,
and
the wind rips
his soul to blistering bits.

They say
give him his flowers
when the sun comes out
with it's hot quench
and
melts the fun
of all his summer dreams
and
he just can't believe
that when he was young

he really did
dream

but now
he licks
at
nothing
finding love
haunting.

*******,
The spider said.
Evil, evil thing to say,
To the fly stuck in your web.
I'd be gone in an instant,
If I hadn't been bitten,
Paralyzed,
Paroxyzed,
Entanglyzed.

Those shimmering beautiful eyes
And delightfully sweet and spicy aroma of your juicy *****.

My lips
Knew a thousand ways to make your legs curl and your body shrivel. To make the web bounce and thrum.

But it was you,
Charlotte,
You who knew the fool in me
That loved to love.
You, Charlotte,
Whose beautiful shimmering eyes and plump body
Fattened me up for slaughter.
And I loved you for every minute of it.

Even as you devour me now,
I close my eyes to the sound of your poison coursing through my veins,
Thrumming along,
Music to die by.

She wears her despair
Like a necklace.

Posts pictures of it
With a bleached sadness
In her teeth.

She smiles.

But she writes captions
About how sad it is
To be.

To "live."
That "life is a journey."
A "highway."
A "trek."
There's "always time to turn over a new leaf."

She finds power
In flitting about
Telling the world her sorrows.

She sweetens
To the sound of pity
On your lips.

Like a hummingbird
She wants you
To open your petals
So that she can take
Her tongue
To your nectar
And
Lick
And lick.

She is a pitiful thing.

She wishes
To be the bird.
The tongue.
The feather.
The petal.
The drooping stem.
The starving
Root.
The bitter dream.
the vibrant ecstasy
of a honey
tasting both bitter
and sweet,
like a nectarine
or the first hint of gasoline
before everything
is burning.

Your dreams
Haunt you
In the backseat
Of your Toyota
As you try to sleep
In the heat
Of summer

Not a piece of lint in your pocket
Can't even afford a chicken wing
But you remember when
You hit the foothills of the Himalayas
Home of that blue jewel, lapis lazuli

A young flight medic
Getting intimate with mortality
Playing footsie
With the angel of death
Pulling mangled bodies
Back to the rotary wing

A couple missions here
Couple missions there
Nothin'
Too
Crazy,

And then, boom,
Reality got stripped bare
Ripped holes in the fabric.

A break
In the hellish normalcy

You stared into the eyes of your enemy
Pale blue, almost lazuli

Just tryin' to save his soul
Nothin' like fighting at 1,000 ft, huh?

'Cause he's got his mind made up
As he reaches for your pistol
You're trying to start an IV

Ain’t **** crazy?

You already thought you were dead
A zombie saving the lives of the free

This has to be a dream
He was just supposed to be a casualty:

Shrapnel through and through
******* chest wound
Tourniquet to the right leg
One on the right arm, too
Vitals, iffy
Hypotensive, trending
Needed fluids, soon.

So when this *******
Started reaching
And couldn't nobody hear it?
You could hardly believe it

Crew chief and the pilot were talking
Not paying attention
Man,
Adrenaline is a wild thing

You struggle
He struggles
where's the ******* chief?
Guess death's coming at 1,000 ft

The bird howls like a banshee
And God's out on patrol
It's either you or he
This is the way  it has to be

There's a ringing in your ears
Is that his heartbeat?
Yours?
The chatter of your teeth?
Or just an animal roar?

Didn't get to see your mother
Your daddy either
Never felt their love
Now you know
They were just two people

Maybe you could've had a wife
Maybe a kid or two
after you got home
and all this was through.

Now, it's either him or you.

There's a break in your memory
As you return to summer
That's been happening more lately
Forgetting things

VA sent you to a specialist
Said you need more testing
Could be that
Could be this
Gonna need an MRI or contrast CT
Could be something
Could be nothing

You look up at the drooping upholstery
Hanging from the ceiling
Of your beat-up Tundra.

You still feel the sweat of the mountains,
You still taste the gasoline
Of that chopper's thunder.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat
Outside your truck
Gunshots
Clipping the horizon
On the other side of the parking lot
Near the Walmart beside Verizon

Ain't no lullaby
Just a requiem.

You close your eyes to sleep
But all you can hear is that chopper scream.