Thirst

 Here, 

spent her entire life,  

to find her in the state that I did:  

and buried her for no other reason than the economy of it 

as I don’t particularly like them  

but will put no effort into bringing them low either  

as i have come to know all five of them,

a whole little squirrel family 

 

that has eaten all my irrigation into a total write-off  

as thirst is something, I too, understand 

as I fear parts of me have fallen necrotic 

in the bittersweetness that death offers 

as grace, in the brutality of it  

 

her skull cleaned under a stretched canvass of face 

a vulgar cheapness; silent beyond a whisper 

I recall of her smallness on the roof years ago 

an abundant life of distraction and urgency  

framed in the effervescence of termination 

in the severity of simplicity  

 

and somewhere, there is a disassociation of me 

curious to where my soul has run off to  

distracted in the flames of violence and lies   

consumed compulsively on my fone  

 

I need to come to terms with all my various fragments 

somewhere I know, in the wells of myself  

that the realness of thirst never subsides 

even as it abolishes the vanity of mortal schemes 

As we sought for this day, our daily bread— 

forgive us of our trespasses,  

as we forgive those who trespass against us— 

& lead us not into temptation, 

but deliver us from evil. 

  

As if reaching for the sun

seeking to experience every piece of ourselves  

tasting in the fragile nectar of existence, 

to be worthy of earning our rest among the roots 

In the shadows of the forest that echo, forever and ever. 

Episodic

 The sensation to harpies tearing into mentality  

Rending thought with beak and claw— 

in sensing a totality that churns like a dynamo  

as a tesseract in myriad dimensions  

extradimmensional wheels of contemplation  

the slow self-destructive walk into the sea 

where things feel foreign and familiar,  

internal and extrapolated  

& I don’t feel good about anything.  

but I get the message— 

I sense it as it happens,  

as if seeing gravity— 

some natural force coming into focus  

drawing this emergent reality into myself  

beckoning me to meet it  

with the claws of my own demons 

The Disrespect.

 The lingering smell of garlic  

As I pull my five-seven to my face 

 

They’re out there shrieking again 

Screaming about something 

This place is always reverberating 

Sirens, and backup alarms, and the scream of machines 

I don’t even chamber a round.  

 

 I can imagine the disdain.  

Always speaking in a language I'm familiar with   

The petulant disrespect of these chunti neighbors  

Always just shy of conflict 

Just below board 

of getting their ass-beaten  

 

and I know what I did — 

To that data center.  

As an awoken dragon, it deserves to burn 

As a Roman decadence. The empire stops here 

To me— 

My empire. 

Borne of my own imagination  

Casually violent and open to aggression 

as everything here seems designed  

To grind away at achievement 

Through some kind of deliberate misanthropy  

That strangles communities 

With the bullshit that is our money  

 

And it feels like— 

Being the skin of society; 

As if we are to be shed to feed the selfish needs of another: thoughtlessly 

And the smell of asphalt lingers,  

in the super-fund site that my whole community grew around.  

Like a mushroom spawned of toxic filth  

 

And I have come to hate this place,  

where my arums grow.  

Where my dog likes the mailman 

That sit like glimmering moments 

Where disrespect is the tip of a cracked chain  

As inherent as the weather 

 

Where carbon monoxide fills the whole house because the neighbor cannot get his shit-box to pass smog and just leaves it running outside my open door while I am inside sleeping.  As if I am laboring into some Rube-Goldberg machine of killing myself. Surrounded by people that are too stupid to grasp anything of merit. 

 

I can accept being poor, but I can't accept being surrounded by morons. How shallow my hopes have become. Meaningless in a wash of political theater and curated controversy.  

How resentful I have become; mired in rancor 

For all of these realms, I crave they be cleansed in fire.  

 

as if the heart of a man could ever subside, cursed as it is.  

 

and this is mine—  

I have done this to myself. Blanketed myself with the stupidity of others, mired in proximity to homeliness and it is dragging me under.  

It is a language I know well.  

 

practiced;  

as the abrasiveness of my personality has made me quite polished.  

I hate all of these things so deeply. As if I am a tesseract of disappointment 

a churning wheel   

that internalizes and externalizes  

every iteration of failure. 

The Nautical Mile

 Trawling emails,  

Checking back in,  

As the anxiety fills like a ship taking on water 

As the disownership sets in in   

The blasphemy,  

The treachery  

Like I've stolen some shitty boat  

and cannot escape with it 

 

Defeat upon defeat 

over some war-torn place that bears no semblance  

To the reason ;  

there is an amnesia to this storm battered harbor,  

A hurricane of forget that eats and hungers 

And can never be satiated 

 

As we awaken to the same headache day after day  

Stuck in this rut where everything seems like a waste of time 

Like a clot in one’s skull, wholistically absolving the concerns of the future  

Made manifest as exhaustion;  tired of the failure, tired of the struggle  

tired of the lies and the bullshit and the lack of advancement  

Tired of this existence where nothing seems to develop favorably 

 

tired of money reigning over everything, and always, religiously coming up short 

 

I dreamt of a child presenting yesterday’s meagre catch to the oracle, as if by virtue of desperation, a favorable fortune could be won 

As if the bones of something that wasn’t good to begin with become better with time 

 

as a coagulated mass of cells in a biohazard bin outside of the clinic should have suffered more  

 

Where the horrors of all that could have been, and what in fact became 

 collapse the probability of another day looking into a phone  

 

Wishing, I had done more with my life than this. 

Adrift in myriad waves, as if drowning is all I know.   

 

And i find myself craving crimson romance, utterly antithetical to this 

 as it is alive and thriving somewhere  

Like some ignorant fantasy that propels this broken cathedral forward  

into the waves of time and circumstance  

Of flesh and profit  

Crassly, writhing in filth and fluids, gasping for air 

Aboard a ship that has already decided our fate 

Adrift in an ocean 

utterly indifferent to our suffering 

Replete

 When my brother spoke of coming down... 

From heroin  

He said that “it, it just feels like I'm dying” 

 

I remember, dismissively  

Feeling like I'd head this before 

You're not dying, your just— body’s going through withdrawal 

 

I think of him; one hand on the wheel of his truck 

the other flicking a cigarette out the window  

Talking some nonsense about paying underground artists 

 

 

I think of him: on days like today, where the dog’s water is frozen into one big cube 

About to liquidate my whole collection, because I don’t believe in it anymore 

As I wake up to another summary execution on the streets of Minneapolis. 

 

I too, feel like I'm dying.  

Tired in a way that becomes disassociative  

In this mælstrom that subsumes everything into itself  

 

 

It feels as though we are transgressing an event horizon; perhaps we already have. 

Are we dead already?  Am I lensing a guaranteed future?  

Or am I going through withdrawal?   

 

 

As if yearning for a thing that no longer exists 

I just need another hit of that, that conceptualized value  

Just t’get me by for another month. 

 

And I think of you on these days,  Eeyore-ass, mountain of a man 

Devoid of belief in any of it anymore,  

beyond the reach of this vulgarity, absolved of all that nonsense.  

Intraposition

 There, in the thought-terminating-cliche 

all of it— 

The lay of the universe,  

seems so clear and convoluted,  

in all of its majestic filth  

Pixelated into the hard edge,  

and still observably invisible 

As the brothers of the wind each had different names  

are these not the Anemoi of extradimensional currents?  

I envision the atmosphere as layered scales superimposed across the blithe unhappiness i feel toward myself 

Unnamed and invisible,  

Awash in the absolving tides of winter   

As everything has equitable importance in the apathy of man 

The gurgle of machines, every morning, and night and weekend; 

a refresh in the vulgarity of it all  

As if there is any meaning  

where shelter from the cold bears more prevalence than the forethought to not be exposed 

  

It plays out so predictably,  

as if the end is already determined 

 forgetting that I am the narrator of this vignette  

as automaton devoid of voice, correcting speech  

played along to such ends that this skin can shed.  

 

Awakening some new form in the face of upheaval  

Where circumstance and obedience have resolved into nothing 

(And how could it?) 

As pouring concrete for a fading world,  

promises of future dissolved into a dead mall 

And I feel like such a husk, as if I have shed everything  

over and over, so many times 

As if the anthem of my soul is distant droning sirens  

The symphony of train horns 

 

it starts like a distant whisper,  

as a dust storm evolving into a synthesized zenith   

Irresistible in a way beyond words.  

the slow peel of bark in ribbons 

The cold sting of a scab coming loose 

As hunger gives clarity,  

pain is an equitable teacher 

To a future that remembers nothing.

The Hunger of Birds (Video)