the swarm

They rob the hive

bit by bit

brood reducing under pressures on all sides

mites and jackets, mice and vandals

the state of nature exacting its course

a peculiar fervor the struggle of the daily
bleeds them out as units are lost, one by one

slipping awkwardly in the snow

The words with landlords ringing in my mind

Through the homeless camps, destitution flows like an endless river

the Debris of their lives scattered across the pavement  

their wretchedness proliferating in all directions
as desecration is common in this theater

ruminating, what brought me here-
he screams slurs to an indifferent city  
the scenes of their savagery play out 
& I am learning: they turn on one another in the cold 

When spring seems the furthest a bitter grip embraces their collective 

in an erosion of self that dissolves into a kind of piracy

Each out for their own

like a regent, that has forgotten her swarm
as a warrior, that has lost their kukri 
stolen, by allies one thought they had. 

have i become a drone to the some greater whole

As I refrain from shrieking in their face

Calling them a faggit, striking them down.

Bringing silence to the pettiness of their universe.
bringing agency to the reality 
i am the manufacture of this experience 

there is a gentle crunch of their failing carapace

& i am learning: There is a design to their demise
as they rush the openings to snatch at the brood 
there is a solution written into some circuit board,

that electrically pulses a blasting cap within the payload of a drone
that brings misfortune to profane royalty 
in the eyes of treachery everything is a combative flux

as the appearance of chaos masks something more cohesive
in greater things beyond selves   
within the myriad fragments 
i am learning

there is an art to the whole. 

Year of the Dragon

Sometimes I feel like the rain is my only friend.

It draws the warring beehives into a stalemate

Easing the fervor to a place where I can meet the day

when thinking how all the trees were stripped of their color in one night

How out-of-place everything feels

As a pantomime of something familiar

An awakening within the shards

Where my landscape has never forgotten the weapon of fire

Sometimes I feel so alone, like I am the furthest one from shore

The deepest in the woods, the most sensitive in the green

That I wonder if I will ever depart into something else.

I wonder if it will ever feel like home

Sometimes I feel like the soul of the desert; just barren and patient and shitty

Adrift on the dunes of my own vacant thoughts

Writhing from the pull of reality

Like some performance, that greets the world with lightness

And I feel it like a wind that never subsides

A restlessness, as if my body is a haunted house

As we speak on the ghosts of numbers, like we know them 

While the sands of our souls are blowing away without import  

inkling

In sobriety

I hear the call of kingdom on the wind

Beckoning me

in some sense the drawn, the pull

a restlessness that flays

against the spaces where I am home

there is an ache of memory

the will to power

as a flaming vortex rising across a ruined landscape

that i have seen in life, as the man burns and the masses cheer

in reign and regency, an ire awakens

as rising and setting suns framed only by light and darkness

somewhere blossoms peel open

hiding the struggle in the soil.

in resentment of the rough

a metamorphosis of reign and regency takes hold

in spaces beyond self as if blurring the twilight

the reality breaching upon barren futures

as the bitter tears of the desert

rise as a wellspring of anger

surfacing to the sound

electrically clenching down

hatred for the unnatural 

throes of righteous warfare await

arise to meet the day

an empire calls, the desert speaks your name

never forget; home lives within you.    

unforgivable vignettes

 

 

 It is there

As rolling thunder in the background

my soul

like some kind of unraveling cyclone

bull-in-china-shop reckless

where my skin feels too tight

itchy, as the insect that skitters across your back in your sleep

only to awaken and not rest again

I feel it, in the places where the ruthlessness of the abuse

Is a scar that never diminishes, where I have become marred from the experience

But there’s no way to know that until I open my mouth.

It is the contamination, that pours through me, savage and hateful. 

impregnated with import, something irreversible stays

as pitch that stains mentality

I listen to them drone on

where they mistake my pause for awe

graphic carnal fantasies unfold in my mind

beyond the surface tension that binds me

there is a compulsion that seeks to infiltrate

conniving.

there is some aspect of self that is scratching at the wallpaper

Hacking at the database , vandalizing the text

corrupting the moment in the flaw

as if I am listening a bit too much

wondering if I am hearing things that are not there

sensing the unfairness of time as a space between many worlds

it has a texture that shapes us,

unique unto ourselves.

In a kind of expansive isolation that never tires

There is a loneliness that nothing can satiate

a rage that never subsides.

As if I am a bystander to the tumultuous waves eroding the origins of my identity. 

I think upon the places that made me like this.

As a series of unforgivable vignettes that cannot be unlived. 

as jealousy for a thing that cannot be obtained, only lost. 

Quartz

In white stones

That can be palmed in the ascent

to shift fortune, or the perception of it

Beneath the shadows of black cloth

That roll through mentality

In the palace of a king

The shards of self are made whole

What stays are the vignettes

In the aviary of an emperor

We are honored, in our way

As the carpets of lichen reach across every surface

The tracks of cloven animals trampled the land

With such distinction

the memory lives in the soil

Like approaching thunder.

crest the landslide

Become the avalanche

my soul is the cactus that summit

and the broken bones in the gorge below.

And all of the rawness,

that lingers like the dust of another era

How the machinery of man has failed us

In the theaters of choosing

They lay as the bones of great pasts

Strewn about the landscape as the wreckage of other mindframes.

It is in the broken stones we are made immortal.

In the shedding power

We are but a note in the chorus of spring.   

eleven hours

There is a mania of regency

Like a horse that never tires

even after hours of dexterous manual labor

There must be a trail of smoke

Down this rainy street, a stillness

black cats cross, slipping into the brickyard

upon my own rhetoric

As if a million microcorrections

Complete the semblance of an idea

As if perched between the future and now

A precipice opens that seems so clear

palpably thin, sanding the grain of time into practice 

nokier

In diminishing returns

They flutter out like little fish into my net

As if catching pierogis into cold water as they get blanched

 For less and less money

Thinking upon what it means to be labeled millennial.

In the spaces where I can’t afford medical care

And these pierogis sell for four dollars apiece

I’ve never eaten one before I came east.

And they look upon me as though I am foreign

And I think about the colors of live oceanic fish as they are pulled from the sea

Shimmering in the pacific sunlight before they die

And in that ocean is a world that is dying

Pulled from the dimensions that it knew

As we are mutually caught in the undertow to its suffering.

How deeply I wish to unravel the ills of our forbearers

And still we are caught in the web of their structure

Bound to the dragnet of their actions

Folded into a thing beyond agreement

To dream of living an arborescent life

& awaken upon world of cars and stone

Thinking only of the places where I cannot find peace 

a bit like knuckles slipping into a grater

the feeling of amateurity stinging more than pain

as the rivers and factories pass beneath the tracks

Feeling further from home  

As a child that has forgotten their gloves

the biting snow greets like catharsis

There in the shrieking where we balk at each other like ravens

behind human masks until we are breaking

where we consume as a thin parchment between realms of understanding

in the moments where chemical salts are used enhance the experience

there is some sublimating state that reigns throughout

in the merciless silence of spraying snow

the emergent bitterness that plays out as a fetish

where I rise through the stairs; knife in hand

upon theaters of formality and practiced demeanor

becoming whole to the fragments of the past

as the ability to fatten a ducks liver by force-feeding the creature

is an ancient and intriguing art of man’s abuses towards nature

done correctly, there is a squeal in the searing of it

as some concept of fragrance comes to mind

the suffering of the animal, eaten like the tallow of strife

boldly hedonistic into unstable futures

As if progressing two steps forward

and three back.

falling deeper and deeper into the forest.

They embrace me with their actions

as the rivers run thorough contaminated neighborhoods

as the flowers bloom in succession

like a chorus rising in time

sung by some myriad of small individual voices

power maintains a more gradual onset

a crescendo distant to my home

brought me here for some kind of humility

in the restless hours

spaces where upheaval consumes inertia

a bitterness draws my talons out

honed from a landscape that knows nothing but venom

in versatility, their eyes have never lain upon a king

as an establishment they know nothing of

to cry for a carnage they cannot withstand

awakening a bloodlust within

this too, is my empire

this too, is my reign.  

foie gras

Somewhere in the spaces between expectation and reality

In carnal luxuries there is a tide of gain and loss

Moving against and within itself.

As a dynamo churning in pornographic thoughts

rendered to the triviality

there is an absence that lingers

and I see it more but ignore it better

in a way that words don’t explain

there is a rife within ephemerality

I am displeased by my short experience of time  

In a hurt that has since become confusion

Like a falling snow that obscures the impact we make

As if entering a nuanced duality

I dream of human carnage and alien technology

To awaken in confines of circumstance

Haunted by the ghosts of inadequacy

rites of spring

It is the nexus of these things

That must come together

In their time, in their way

As it is the rebirth that binds us

As we are all but fleeting beings,

wound as a whole that

struggle and survive

unraveling against time

we must rise in the rebirth of each fleeting moment

whole—

undaunted from the experience

as if it bears no weight to our soul

as if supporting a lie that makes it hurt any less

but I come to bear my scars with pride

as if they are armor that holds all my inner anger in place

where it comes out of the softest part of me

I feel it in every blossom

I hold it in every breath

And there is a place beyond words

Where I feel it as an extension of something more than myself.

reference

Because language is so flawed

So broken

So filled with the failings of these human forms

Broken.

In a rage that shears ones character from their soul

So angry that it unravels 

the grace that makes us 

grown Piece by piece 

implacable 

 Rending empathy from self 

until nothing is whole 

 in the process that is 

becoming 

connected to an emptiness 

beyond words

Compleat.

hyphen

It plays out

in cheap street theater

punch-and-judy style

as the snow blows across current landscapes

it seems so far away

and still somehow omniscient

in the forethought of the past

manifested in moments that could-have-been

as the undaunted march of time

tramples us into oblivion.

And still,

We rise from the cracks in the asphalt

Only to have our seeds swept in the wind

Luxuriant and orgasmic

As if life itself

Naturally emergent

to the imagination of possibility. 


it scrapes like a card against the table 

as we draw into the future

play-by-play 

as all existence is but a game

as we draw heavier and heavier hands

resolved unto the agency of ourselves