i used to see in black and white
before I learned what colors were,
the world was free from bitter light
but angry hues now detail a perfect blur

my perspective grew more defined,
everyone around me is now at fault
for creatures that lack what is refined
and succession is incapable to halt

so I've been told, democracy
could do ourselves no harm
they didn't diagnose hypocrisy
only pretty liars could charm

i used to believe that bearing arms,
meant man embracing fellow man
but instead lives were taken by firearms
as filth infiltrated their land

i was told narcotics reap lives,
bringing forth a hollow, sadistic addiction
the children let loose
and desperately pleaded otherwise
their salvation is unfortunately dictated by a foundation
broken by pieces of sweet releases

i used to think that birds could fly,
and all fish, gifted to swim
but battered wings can't get you high
and missing scales are a chance too grim

Sometimes,
I repeat myself
and let things flow into the trash

& some days
I really am lost
on
what to say

I know
i've only learned
a penny on a planets worth
of will & words
but
some days
&
some things
just let you know
what your life needs to be
& to go searching very hard
isn't
always
the case.

Hello, little fish,
swimming through my brain
smooth and simple, playing,
splashing the water,
rainbow of color
I understand you completely.
You aren't what i expected,
but boy, do I like you here.

I'm sorry I forgot to feed you on Sunday.

While the hum and the hurry
Of passing footfalls
Beat in my ear like the restless surf
Of a wind-blown sea,
A soul came to me
Out of the look on a face.

Eyes like a lake
Where a storm-wind roams
Caught me from under
The rim of a hat.
     I thought of a midsea wreck
     and bruised fingers clinging
     to a broken state-room door.

I am the Grey man,
I shake with shakes,
I moan and I've danced too,
I loved with a loss,
I haven't forgotten you.

The day seems brighter,
my eyes cant adjust,
I've made rhymes of a writer,
yet I wish I was dust.

Although cold and sometimes alone,
I have company deep in my bones,
you may love me and I love you too,
But I am the way of the Grey,
Because I cant see Blue.

He tells me of his problems.
His job, his girlfriend, his friends, his home
life.
And I nod and I listen.
And I interject sometimes with a cliché or a suggestion, with as much compassion as I can summon.
And he sighs
and takes a long drag from his cigarette, and paws the ground with his Nikes, and hands me the can of beer we are sharing.
And he inhales
                             deeply
as though the air itself can fumigate the scribbles crisscrossing his skull
and with a wisp of smoke
he starts to say something
I don’t know what but
instead, he
                      pauses
in mid-breath
and he turns and looks at me
with sad eyes
But how are
                        you
he says.  
And I pause
just
       long
               enough.

Just long enough for me to look around and sigh;
just long enough for the American Spirits between our fingers to smolder
and for me to weigh the pounder of flat Tecate in my other hand;

just long enough for an overripe lemon to drop
or for a moon flower to blossom
or for a pair of black wings to beat back the wind
or for a bead of dew to skate down a blade of grass;

just long enough for the streak of a lone meteorite to span the sky;

or just long enough for our bones to vibrate in time with the rattle and sizzle and sputter of spraycans in the dark streets behind us
or for the clarion anguish of a million and more homeless to be drowned out by the wail of one sole siren;

I pause
and the world
                           persists.

the earth lurches its creaking bulk sunward for one more day
and the dawn establishes its circumference like a gold aurora;

the desert wind whips down the slopes of Hollywood Hills, past the observatory and Mount Olympus and down Sunset
and its hot dust scours the sidewalk and and slams into our bared and chattering teeth;

And I feel Brian edge

closer to me
concerned
but I have no
                          sense.

The fuming crescendo of space pulses in my head.
My heart is gored through and through by a billion billion whistling neutrinos.
An avalanche of fire from the hills and an inexorable nimbus of smoke advancing on this scatterplot city, apocalyptic-like.

And Brian feels
it now
            too.

A stifled convulsion of thunder.
A muffled ignition of time.
This
         city
an explosion and implosion, expansion and contraction, all thermite and naphtha in its nucleosynthesis, fission and fusion simultaneous;

this pause
just
       long
               enough

for a thousand people or more to grasp for a final breath, their gaping mouths in awe of the energy of one moment;
for this dying
                           place
antenna of flesh and metal, to transmit its final static into the boiling background of the universe until its spiral arms flail no more.

And I contemplate the effect of gravity on a ghost
and the time it takes for the geology of the self to schism
and the fault line in my soul to displace
and the resultant tremors to ripple
through my body and into my epicentered eyes

but I already
                          know
and so does Brian.

He wraps me in his arms
until my trembles subside
and I think
I have paused
just
       long
               enough

to learn the meaning of friend.

Residents of New
Orleans gathered to wage
war on the world’s
butterfly population.

Smoking under the Friday Night Lights.
                 Counting change,
                              **** work for minimum wage.

Small talk of unreachable heights.
                  A young mind with a big dream,
knowing none of this is worth it,
in the grand scheme.

You can keep your job
                         I didn’t want it anyway.

Running things like you are Don of the
                                                                      pizza mob.

Although, I do appreciate,
the liquor money to drink until self-hate,
                   and cigarettes to survive the hang-over.