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)

Darrell Watson's Breakfast Jamboree

The privilege to die alone 

where the trains and the refineries poisoned everything 

I want to be alone. At one with nothing 

Curling into a ball like a little cancerous little dormouse  

Sleep it all off. forever 

in the name of some new atrocities, that I no longer find the will to fight. 

And there this lingering feeling, like, I was supposed to do something  

in some other reality I surely missed a stop on the train  

I don't know where I am anymore, and I also don’t care 

my body feels like a haunted house 

there’s nothing to offer beyond the labor of my meat or the wrath of my mind. 

And I can’t stop looking at the shitstorm  

In its insurmountable endlessness  

Where the beast never tires 

the storm that never stops 

And I’m exhausted.  

My soul hurts.   

Or is this the onset of some blood-borne cancer? 

These tendons and joints and spine are all expressing their existence to me 

and I won’t become anything of relevance  

so this all seems so scripted.  

as a predictable, fragile anger. 

And the truth is; I'm bored. 

While ‘exciting’ is a neutral term,  

the excitement of chaotic redundancy wanes 

There, in the recycler.  

As a hive of fencing semi-precious metals 

Shopping carts buzzing in and out, as disgusting as cockroaches 

Scurrying in and out of the shadowy places  

In the service of the drug.  

Beneath a sign that proudly says: “Praise the Lord.” 

As if salvation is stolen metal in exchange for dope. 

As a cathedral to depravity   

The atrocities of this faith have become vulgar  

Begging an awoken reality in the face of this 

Is this how I'm going to spend my time? My life? 

I think not.  

we must shake this intransient, financially impossible state 

And I don’t know how. 

As some migratory bird shanghaied in the mountains 

The shifting trade winds, have been favorable 

until now

Unsent Calls

 I should call someone. 

... but then all the inertia of all that 

 

flickering shadows, that kind of sparkle as they pass 

And sometimes figures,  

and sometimes the never-fucking-ending alien-puzzle dreams. 

 

i should call someone,  

go to the doctor so they can give me pills 

 

but the only person I feel comfortable enough to call, 

 I'd rather have sex with,  

do drugs,  

dance in a sweaty warehouse with 

hangout with people that come off as aliens.  

Or gods on a good one,  

or any iteration of the inbetween 

 

I should call someone— 

but when they pick up I'll want to hear about *their* day  

I'll want to know what *they’re* doing 

and I wouldn't get to bringing any of this up 

and I'll miss them 

and wish they were here 

to fawn over my lilies 

 

as the alarming harmlessness  

of skittering domestic insects 

 

and I wonder, if this is how my brother felt from the seizures 

where he like, gnawed his tongue into meat  

and ran his car off the road 

 

or are they gathering to make contact, again. 

Which is always, insightful.  

But curiously, never helpful.  

 

or is it just my mind unraveling— 

after years of this unachievable narrative 

 

of time, substance and leaded water 

have run their course 

 

and all of it in the face of the child rapist, 

which seems more pressing  

as the quality of our life unravels 

in a way that makes bloodshed and gunfire seem, reasonable   

I should call someone,  

because I have been in solitude for a long-time  

living alone in crowds 

Alone with plants 

alone with this, mind. 

 

and there is one less call to be made,  

and i feel it acutely, when wrapping my tools to fit my hands 

i feel it in the hopeful fun of buying dog-toys,  

as if being kind to nature is its own fulfillment 

I hope you sleep well, where nearby firearms can’t awaken you in the night  

where the scarred and filthy, shirtless urchins 

shuffle along the road 

their metal-filled shopping carts laden with all manner of import 

in the ritualized escape attempt

for which drugs (allegedly) hold the key  

How derogatory this all seems 

the howl of the passing trains 

when gazing upon the sloppy balter of lilies 

resting in voluptuous sexuality 

their bodies observably abused from the hail 

and yearning in the summer heat.  

 I should call someone. But there is no one to call. 

as if everything culminates into disassociation 

interdependence and substance and desire  

meld into a currency beyond apprehension  

in a pursuit hopeful to numb the incessant feeling 

of petals being shredded in the rain    

Epiphyllum oxypetalum 47/100

 I think of your queen-of-the-night Its petals so delicately slender because you never watered it I always imagined it was somehow more inherently graceful than others As if each occurrence smells better and better in every memory Once, when I was a child and my grandmother woke me up to appreciate the heap of dust-covered leaf-straps that lived unnoticed in the doorway of the old farm. Like an alien in plain sight. I think of those nights, in the subtle awe and wonder of beautiful secrets, ever-present in the mundanity. in the gentle surprises that echo within, I think of you fondly, of the softness of your petals and the rigidness of your character, and the endless cunningness of your graceful shape, illuminated in moonlight. And I yearn as if the desert, for kind surprises on balmy nights. In such a way that if I sit really still, I could somehow become the night itself; wrapped around you, wherever you are.