Mouths open, Angel's back with friends.
A chorus of the celestial,
Wings tucked, halos blazing.
(Deaf, and you'd swear they're screaming)
Melody simple, beautiful, and toxic,
Blasting insanity back this way:
"They can't take that away from me."

Cheap Whiskey is still angry,
Writing about your arms, and your eyes.
Stuck in the rhythm of the Jazz Insatiable.
Voices, in harmony,
On the way to death's cousin
The "not - quiet - enough"

It feels nothing short of genius loving you.
Any notions, thought in such volume,
With such swiftness, should be going
Somewhere important, or to some
Great End.
Yet, all imagined here, stuck, throwing, with my own lungs.
Rings of smoke, and
Red sound. 

The Lines draw themselves,
If the dirt leaves a history,
If the wings help them fly,
If her car's still ******* running,
If the knife slipped a different way,
And the blood didn't stain. 

But what should I do when the voices get louder?
When it's all I can do, to give each
Frequency its face, how do I put her
Back in focus?
Humming, and a hot mind,
My teeth break,
And I sing back.

Difficult deciding that you'll
Never be so sure,
If you faked it so she'd want you,
Or if you faked it for that smile. 
Wings, splayed out across 
My open torso, begging for a story,
Maroon eyes, that tell furious truth. 

(There is something to be said for my future.
I'd hope it would be: The city I 
Resolve myself in, might rise and
Fall with the air in
My chest. We might inhale, 
Together, the streetlight dreams,
Before choking on stale air,
And hurling, in unison.)

Clotted outside, rushing throughout,
Stains don't bleed. But the scars do
Leave marks. The Lines 
Draw themselves. 
Despite my best efforts to 
Stop them.

I stole away, with an

Angel intent on keeping 

Me company, for my

Last day on earth

She drew my name in the clouds with

Ink she bought from God,

Broke my bed,

Ripped my blankets, and

Sat me down to

Mock my ignorance

Needing a place to sit,

We built a bench, out of

Broken promises

Each knot in the wood

Melted into a bitter syrup, as I

Recommitted it to memory

We drank coffee behind the

Store that sold my

Innocence to those more

Deserving of the 

Luck they’d received.

Their tender was 

Myth and merchandise,

Final sale,

No return.

The torn soles, on the shoes I

Wore, slid softly through the

Field of grinning flowers, their

Beauty rivaled only by their

Obvious ignorance

Fingers wrapped my wrist,

Departure was inevitable

Wings spread, we soared over the

Blue and purple of the 

Flowers, shaded darkly by the 

Sun’s embarrassment

But from miles up, my

Sight, seemingly unchanged by my

Decreasing proximity

Showed me their vigilant smiles

Had she dropped me 

Anywhere else, the

Beautiful field of 

Terminal foliage

Would sway the same, with

Each windy eve

I woke up, drunk on

Sleep and whiskey, as the

Sobering veracity of my

Failure to keep dreaming

Became achingly apparent.

I'm sick of being told that I'm 
"Not Charles Bukowski." Because, 
I never said I was.
But also, and more, because, every time,
(And I suppose I've told myself plenty too)
It's a let down. 

I want to believe
(And not in that X-Files sort of 
(I Want to Believe sort of
(way) 
That we're all Bukowski. 
We're all at least poets. 
At least we're all ***** poets,
In one way or another. 
"I'm too ****** for this *******."

But this is starting to feel like
The part in the film when I'm 
Talking to the old girl, and she says, 
"What I've said up to this point is
Pointless. Now you decide."
I'm at the part of the book 
When he finally finds her.
And yes she still loves him,
Or at least. She's loved him the whole time. 

I can turn a leather recliner
Into a throne, if need be. 
I'll tape a crown of paper together
To prove a point. 
I just happen to think
The kid getting high in my kitchen
Has a real chance at the presidency. 

(Grab this, draw a circle on the floor
With it. Fill the circle up with
Everything you know, the words
The love, the colors, the mended,
And the still open. Watch that light up
At least a universe.)

I'd hope our kingdoms
Could co-exist peacefully,
But my respect for you,
As a fellow ruler,
Would never waiver

Because you can make your crown
Of staples and business cards
And be King Bukowski if you wanted,
But at least you'd be special. 
And (at the very least),
You'd be king.

His middle parts were
Passing through the couch that I was
Sitting on, but his
Face felt nice and fuzzy.
And it was way too
Way too loud.

Ocean water, creeping
Up the black-sanded beach
On the island where 
He drank his ***.
And he's telling lies to any
Crustaceans brave enough to
Traverse his thinning limbs.

Yet, reflecting neatly 
Off the ebony, and decisively
Catching his eye, is the light of her
Tiara, embracing her
Maneless neck.
In walks Nala, and the tide,
His tide, recedes.
The island becomes
Her savannah.

I watch him smile, and 
Close his eyes, and
Soak the moment in. 
Her claws extended, sharp,
Etching proof of her
Arrival into the eager,
Earthy floor.

Owning the steps she takes,

I shudder and attempt to stand.

But stop, as she paws his wrist,

Gripping it tighter,

Scarring him with 

Pointed, filed nails. 
Making him 

Bleed, and making 

Him beam.

Pride is just a 
Noun when there is
Hemorrhaging to handle.
Pressure must be
Applied on all sides of the 
Wound, in order to prevent
Infection, and infatuation.

But I guess when a 
Beast of beauty, makes a black
Sea walkable for you, 
You're liable to get caught up
Staring at the jewels
She's ripped out of her crown, and 
Sewn into her hair. She'll make you 
Hiss back at the sun, and
Talk about wild life.

The senses, being irrelevant
And often misleading,
Have led me to answering questions,
You've never bothered asking

When "when" is not a timeframe
So much, as it is a 
Time of day, be it
Morning over coffee,
Or a digital dessert, I can't be
Made to let go of the
Gasps I grab for, upon your entrance
Or exit, breath becomes trivial.

You steal jealousy from
My eyes, and quite a jealous
Man can I be. Those same portals
You fill up every day with
Smoke and sensationalism, through which
Stolen intentions, kept quiet,
Are made mutineers
Against their vigilant captains. 

The how came from surrender. 
Realizing you turn me against 
Myself. And as the world falls
Down around me I can't
Get that awful sound of my
Own hypocrisy, crashing down, out
From the canals they've found to call home. 

Below broken-hearted-bowls,
And lying over the phone, and a
Cancerous presence on the
Stage of Socialites, you still look
Perfect with a cigarette in your lips.

I've used "portals" before.
To mean eyes.
And cigarettes before.
To mean freedom. 
But you just smoke them... Don't you...?

There are those who marvel
At the size of her, before taking in
The expansive beauty the moon can speak. 
Some are willing to court her,
Others rip the hoop skirt off,
And **** her 'til she bleeds. 

Oddly, no one is ever jealous,
Of the time others spend with her. 
She's taken for granted, as
The passed-around property
Of the Uncultured Below. 
But that's not why I'm sorry...

Or don't you wonder...
Don't you ever wonder?
Who went wrong?
What's correctly missing?

It is in how I love,
The ways not withstanding,
And reason, remaining remiss,
That I ask you to forgive me. 
You are who you are
Because I love you. 
And I am who I am,
Because you are.

It’s all laundry and cigarettes

White-knuckle odd jobs

And freezing your *** off, at 7 AM, to

Help your buddy out

Breaking and bleeding, and

Smoking and shirtless, and

Spinning your finger and thumb

Counter-clockwise until the

Resulting ring of fire and fury can

Torch your inhibitions

No one ever restricted you from

Rioting with grace

And through the windshield of your vision,

The streets wake up to the smell of

Alcohol and experience

It’s all rubble in dumpsters, and

Spray paint that swears 

Oaths, to bands and bandages

Singing the praises of 

Stolen promises, their swiftly

Prying minds can’t understand

And you’re standing

In front of the truck

Arms outstretched

Pistons firing air through your

Organs, that vibrate with the

Trepidation of nightmarish resolve

It’s all battlefields and accomplices,

The kid that kicked you down so,

That you’d eat the dirt,

Place your teeth in

Leather pouches,

And taste defeat for decades

You’re pleasantly high on the 

Smoke of your still-burning debt

You’re a supermarket superhero

You’re the queen of the Gasoline Dream

It’s in the way that

Your outline is

Edged out

By your insides, and the

Arms of the chair have become

Wings, that unfurl over

Valleys and oceans, of headstones,

And nursery wards

Tinted windows promise nothing

Regarding secrecy of soul

What would your wisdom teach me

About sentience?

I want this to be about you, 
But it's not

It resides in the hours
That I spent wide awake
When I couldn't sleep so I smoked
And I couldn't dream so I wrote
What I hoped I'd see

For the metaphors 
I couldn't keep churning out
So I smoked some more
And I spurted out
Lines about lines

For the driver on the dented highway
With the window cracked
To feel the chills of the air blowing past
Listening to Bob Dylan tell her
The person she was supposed to be but
Never was
And never will

I want this to tell you how I feel,
But it won't

And if she drives far enough she'll reach that
Looming exit
The one she knows she must take
Back to the life she's sick of living
But fights through the pain
For the same reasons that I
Fight through, because
I want to meet a pretty girl
With great vocabulary,
And a smile like Rita Heyworth

I'm still looking for that girl
To drive me across that highway
And recycle old Dylan lines
As if they were personal dictums
She had synthesized herself
And we can freewheel this road together

See I'll never be that great poet that
Three hundred and twenty-nine thousand people
Have watched on the Internet
And that is a comfort

Because the truth resists simplicity
And in my heart of hearts I am a simple man
And telling the truth through words in meter
Or in stanzas
Will never come as naturally to me
As it does to Dylan
But in my acceptance of my ignorance
I become more powerful
Than I'd ever need to be 
Poetic.

So if writing is always my hobby
And never my workhorse
If I can self-satisfy through 
Strict stanzas that I will
Seldom share
If it is only to a girl 
Driving on a highway
Singing songs about formerly-modern America that I
Recite these rehearsed thoughts of mine
Than I will have succeeded

Because my career will have been love
And maybe I can write this 
About you.
And then, and only then, it will be.