March of Progress

   It’s there in the empty plans Where somehow I know they won't come through Where the vibey, jivey, lip service Amounts to nothing Over and again, like I am in a hall of mirrors Pretending that I see anything other than my own vanity reflected back Wondering how the terror that is wrought could have any other meaning Like a whisper in the night that consumes all thoughts The hum of an inherent illness that we have brought Where the fading dreams retire

to a world that dies a little more each day in the beat of some unknowable rhythm It’s there in the hatred that has framed all This tireless storm that gets older, and older And old— As if the stake of the world rests in the will to rise and rise again keep fighting, keep pushing to recover from the damage with some kind of grace Like the filth is not corrupting. like the scars don't remain forever Mutating into otherness, a familiar thinness settles like a dissatisfying mist Asphyxiating the will to heal. just let me bleed out here, just leave me to die

And the numbers, and the systems, and the confusion seem to climb onward into infinitum Beyond the reach of anything sustainable And its there in the itch

the bugs that feed on you day and night eroding confidence with the lackluster effort

a stolen droplet of lifeblood at a time

As everything is so egregiously overpriced To the effect that: its meaningless And it all seems to dissolve into some form of capital Some echo between ‘seen’ and ‘read’ Where I am waiting for something of reverence to take place.

Circumstance

Like music I’m not sure if I am hallucinating

As delicate sounds, like air trickling into a room from a cracked window 

I feel them, when they talk about me, sometimes  

 

And I’ll know the conversation before I close the office door 

I heard it all last night, already  

And I want to share this and be helpful 

But I hate them. I fucking hate them so much. I want to watch them burned alive— 

their flesh peeling from their bodies in shrieks of agony 

As existence razed from the surface of this reality  

 

 

Each day this bastardization unfolding 

The intensity so vast, as if I am reading some unspoken texture to nature 

And it is such that the volume is always dialed to eleven  

As my mind sounds off every one of their species names in Latin,  

reads every tag in the neighborhood, overhears conversations, vocal or otherwise 

Into these affixing horizons  

Where I feel so powerful and weak  

And immense and small 

Where the connection and disassociation fuse into the singularity  

Of a massive bird eclipsing the sun

Sometimes

 Sometimes it calls out to me  

Like a siren, only I can hear, across space and terrain 

as an endless ocean 

Echoing against the cosmos 

 

Sometimes their pitiful moans haunt me  

Crying out in agony, like bodies slumped over the wreckage 

That I have caused them  

From their extraction and vivisection 

 

Sometimes I have these dreams, right before I wake 

Where things seem familiar in a way that I know isn’t real.  

And it echoes against the cold logic of reality  

All day, perplexingly  

 

Sometimes I forget to keep my weapons sharp 

I feel it in the bones of my hands, old gears that I wish I could grease  

In the practiced places that always feel like picking myself back up.  

From the earth that never fails to catch me.   

Phantom Limb

 The flickering dog star 

Outside my window  

For what seems like eras  

 

Looking upon this space  

As a diorama  

As so much has come and gone  

 

a sensation of absence  

As a phantom limb 

Ringing through me  

Like a nuance I will not experience again.  

 

Where the laughter, and the jokes, and the joy 

Evaporate; as they claim this space is a desert  

As idiots claim expertise 

 

As the lesson that you must protect your face 

As they begin to kick you  

With the intent of fatality  

 

I make a better friend than a partner 

In every facet,  

Because a friend can tell you the truth.  

When the weakness of a romantic interest will perpetually have ulterior motives 

 

And there is no justification 

For the ancientness that we become  

No excuse 

No patience  

No forgiveness  

 

As if a familiar smell  

 

Like the last epithet that connects 

Heroism to treason.      

   

Nomo

 As I am the condor above you 

The sand beneath your feet   

Souls of the desert reign true 

In the blandness of retreat 

 

The nightfall is gathering, set to take its course 

The riding inevitability, in a way without remorse 

 

Mija, this is not so pressing—  

& it cannot be the end— 

Where fires within are burning  

I know that you will rise again  

 

Alguien que lo dicen, este es final  

Pero, el amistad que tenemos es totalidad  

 

There is an expression I remember  

Against the hotness of the sun  

Affixed against the glimmering ocean;  

Our best days are yet to come. 

 

Hang tough dog fighter,

The woodlands of memory await

Calming to the core I can remember

a place beyond this hate

 

hold strong sailor,

navigate out the sea

the waves might rise to meet us

while in our hearts we’re free.

 

Be still warrior,

The path is not yet clear

Many roads fork and converge

That lead beyond this fear

 

Hold your head up human

The day is not yet done

factions of unknown bravery

have still not been won  

 

calm your thoughts being,

this world is not complete

there is so much left to do

there’s a fate we’ve got to meet

5, 6, 7, 8

 

It looms as a horizon I can never trespass.

A wake with no ship

That ripples between what is and isn’t

Struggling to have agency over something one cannot control

 

It runs like tireless horses

That rear up swiping their hooves

In one sense will trample you senseless

And in another, key to future salvation

 

I have wondered forever it seems

On visions of conquest and empire

And how those curses have befallen

Greater men than myself.

 

to see now the awakening æsthetic

is nothing more than contamination within my landscape

as a cancer within my soul

that causes the wilderness within to spread.