[becoming]

I always admired
the poets who could
look at a molecule
and build cities
with gorgeous words
I could only capture
with sketches and lines

Sometimes I wish I could
look through their eyes
and take with me
a piece of their mind
to keep forever

I still push these old fingers
to write something profound
but instead I leave
faces and bones
carved into the walls;

scatter the floor with
paper and pen
try to feel the shades

but no one can read it.

No one ever reads it
like a poet does.

I found you
the way I found myself;
tangled up in the
seaweed of Lake Spring
and there were fish in our hair;

they told stories
of how hollow we grew
when we sunk to the bottom
and kissed the rocks;
but we still floated
above the water
only to show our
needlessness

you've never been the same,
you never let me
brush your hair
and tell stories of
twisting anxiety
that curls in my stomach like
a disease,
or the boys that
grace your bed and leave

I only wish,
perhaps,
we'll lie in our graves
and find our way back
to that lake again.

your brevity
of speech
weighed down
on movement and I ached
to dance with the other
convulsing bodies
of music,
forgetting the ego
I carry like Atlas
on a crooked back,
ribbed and bruised
from the heavy task
of apologizing.

But you carried on
in the deaf silence
we shared,

it was the only thing
we ever had in common.

there is no news
on the television
to ripple the comfort
of complacency

no ligh to dry
the mud that shifts
beneath my feet

No laughter to soothe
the currents that leak
into my lungs and tighten
like little strings,
binding together
the thoughts that make me breathe
so


easily

sometimes I inhale
te smoke that cakes in
my chest
just so I can have
weight that stays with me
and kills the rest
of tiny cells
that pulse through my body
like parasitic insects

there are no things
to twist
in my mind to make the colors
burst into life
and send electric waves
through this twisted body

No, there is
just waste and value
fading into thin lines
and we worship
numerical gods
as if they hold the key

quite frankly there is love
in everything
but it died the day
God made the bank.

You yell in fluxuating tones,
piercing and hollow,
letting the words
do the rest of what
your hands couldn't.

I was jagged
like your tongue in
thighs of warmth,
flowing freely like
blood out of
white skin

and I swallowed,
letting the metal
fill my throat
like a promise of
corruption
and I twisted
like your body in
sheets of ice and sweat
panted out the smoke
you left
curling in the ash tray;

its where we met
and shattered.

I've learned from your
wisdom that passion is spent
in dark rooms with strangers
in the death of summer
where the cold
sinks deep into
lovely bones.

and I'm tired
of coiling my
arms around your neck
as to hold you back
into my insecurity

your broad steps
only get heavier
as mine fade
the more I awake.

hate is a
heavy weight
gripping my conscience
with clumsy fingers
and it whispers
in deaf ears
about forever.

all I hear
is how the end
creeps nearer
without faith and reason
I only exist
partially to
bloody my knees
with the dirt of forgiveness

and inch by in sleep
with dreams of
a juxtaposed sense of
self identity

yet,
all I see are
shaded horizons,
sliding closer into focus
as my mind
sinks deeper
into your teeth,
crushing hope

and I
only focus on
fertilization
as my body breaks down
in the soil of
former bodies

you may step
on my grave but
don't tread on the flowers

they gave me purpose once.

I slipped the wires
around your throat,
let your words choke on
apologies and sobs;
wrapped the piano strings
a little tighter each time
my hand clenched for air
through
screams of agony

your body contorts
but I walk it off
pretend its music, and
you're dancing;

a reanimated corpse
of a former lover

but it fades into one
blurry image of
subconscious art through
infliction.

My voice is hollow now
like your heart
when I leeched my way through
and drained it of
it's poetic content,
disposing of each
individual piece.

Guilt still claws
away my lungs in
the form of smoke,
coughing and spitting
it's tar and it's
hope out into
filthy little hands
that only

clench around
musical keys and
step by step
through lines and spaces,
filling a void

I created in the name of
hollow passions.

i stood on the edge
of your plush carpet,
dirty and brown
like the dirt we sift our
naked hands through
and I found inside
each grain,
a secret of the earth

bound in molecule upon molecule
of endless uncertainty.

your tables are bare,
reflecting light
in dark passions
and I see my face in the gloss,
imagining the others
who have peered in the
same empty oak,
apologizing to branches
that severed limbs
to hold up
coffee cups and old magazines.

but the answer
you contain in these
silent walls
will never satisfy
my hungry heart
because beneath the paint
I'll find you hide the letters
perfectly

in plaster,
concealed;
empty.

But your words
will never touch them
ever again.

I add and subtract
from the figures in my sleep,
trying to calculate what
life means behind
dirty carpets
low self esteem.

Maybe if I talk louder
you'll hear the pitch and
back away, realize that
it's the truth,
the only thing that
remains concrete.

you just keep screaming,
hope I'll see that
its your fault
so just feel sorry
for you, you, you.

I guess I'll never understand
your childish fascination with
corpses that laugh themselves to sleep

or how you watch her body move
like a dancer at night.

Is it humor that you dig for
under my skin?
because you never even
stroked the surface
for a single second.

I hide inside for
everyone else but you
so push me away
I knowyou want to

just fucking.


fuck.

you looked me in the eye
holding the bible
like a precious gem,
yet the words bubbled out
of your steaming mouth

and I took them in.

"look how her body bends and snaps
and falls through the cracks
of a lying earth.
I only hope
one day she'll find the fire melting through,
all the way to the bones."

and you say this with a voice
so self assured, I
only follow them with
blind confidence and
hold my beating heart inside,
hiding the vibrations
within the smallest voice.

light burns in the corners
like your lungs when you
fold them
backwards into the paper,
breathing in the words.

its silly looking back
into a past without a flashlight
to guide your through the
weeds and the
black it contained.

I remember the exchange;
a heart for a heart
I never used but once
on a cold day,
silly how

things change.

Push yourself
against the glass
as thin as a past
paved with paper cups and
beer cans,

a life leading
to a parking lot
bloodstains on the carpet
of a chevy truck

bite down on the bullet
its the last thing you'll taste
except semen and words
you will never erase
just block it out
with cheap television sitcoms
and tv dinners
prepared for two.

you may have had a word
with your father before he left
but in his pickup he took with him
the only thing you kept
it's a diary with
a heart in it
you wrapped up, kissed, and
burned.

the ink is just a memory
of something you used to have
it's value dissolves
on the tongue, bitter like
tabs;
but it pumps through your veins
like cocaine
the only thing you'll
eat in the morning.

you can crack your head on the counter
watch the blood fill the sink
it illustrates a time when
you used to think of
better things
like fairies and books,
cartoons and sex
stretched along your
arm band,
tight like your grip.

well stick the needle in
its time to sleep
but tonight you won't have time
to think of me
driving away in your
pick up,
with all your dreams
smashed against rocks
I left my seed in.

time too look back
and hate what you don't know
I just can't describe how
much it shows
even though the
amber that lines the toilet bowl
I just lost control

pretty little
rag doll.

I often wonder
for a moment
what it takes to break a limb

out in the open space
where you sing your
songs and write your notes
gracefully and
it shows just how
art debilitates you
from the inside
out.

I took these hands,
made fractions of feelings;
broken and disjointed
these bodies only
kill me.

I'll have you know
it's all I wrote
to keep your
interesest alive.

peak through the bones
let me know what you see
is it just a cry
for greedy eyes,
tracing the lines from
form to form

trying hard to
fit me into the
message,

overdone and
worn out.

am I just so old
aging with time
idealess, pennyless, and lying?

Theres a cure
for my disease
it's called a bullet in the cheek,
a needle in a vein,
vomit and blood stains.

Its just too glamourous
too happy of an ending
for a person like me.

it's like a slow kiss
leaking in from
my fists down to
an empty void

into the ground that I
collide with.

concept, fading away
at the edges of a
yellowed picture
reminds you of
something you used to have.

it's like rain
watering down
the chalk, outlining your
severed body

like glass,
broken and crushed
like my wrist in your hand

glitter
bile
gone.

you tick like a clock
in my mind
in the dark
winding the same
replies
automatic
and dry

its our bond
severing at the cracks
gaping and sore
its too soon
there's no room
anymore.

you're a loose tooth
aching and
trying to break loose
out of a socket
now bruised
and
worn.

like our love
always was
like you
denied
before.

its the same cycle
day after day
bringing in the sunlight
and fading to grey
it's enough to
put you out into
ashes of
what I loved before

it's just empty.

It happens sometimes. You don't even realize something has changed until suddenly you open your eyes after being asleep for so long and then suddenly the sky is no loger a sky. A person is no longer a person. Time is no longer JUST a system of measurement, it becomes the sole dictator of the earth and suddenly,

your life begins to change.

You wonder what happens because the change is so confusing. You see things you never noticed before. The sky that always seemed a shifting screen of light and scenery becomes a void. An empty, open hole where the earth ceases to be tangible. It is a window, displaying evidence of creation; teasing you with unexplainable history it hides from you,

this open window.

And the person across the street, anonymous, oblivious, is not just a human being responsing to nerve synapses, they're no longer just existing-- they are pieces of pieces. They are.. a mind full of secrets, history, a channel, a view, a spindle, and they hold another perspective in the palm of their hands, wrinkled with birth and movement. They are not machines or animal or matter. They are a vortex, a life, a breathing manifestation of creation. A body, a face, and a world all within a separate mind, body, and breath.
And they think.
They think just like you're doing now.

But time...
Time is different. Time is a number. A definite, inorganic thing. That is a thing? What makes something...a thing? Is time really just a thing? You ponder this until it consumes you. Until this time, this thing becomes living. And you see it happening each day. The numbers, each concrete symbol belonging to schedule and order push you along through the minutes and hours.

Each ticking second, recording movement, atmosphere, tone, memories.

What you don't know is that time starts and never ends. Time wakes us up, feeds us, and puts us back to sleep.

It rules everything.

And this change you're moving in to..time regulates each moment. Time moves you.

When you see it's fingers, clicking into cycles, kneading you, shaping you,

it never quite
feels the same ever again.

you're disparate;
no, I am the glass
you tip in your hands
to pour the contents
down the drain

I loved it when you
spat in the sink
as my body
swirled into a whirlpool of
infinite uncertainty

it's where we based our
feelings on,

it's

where we hid the bodies.