soporific

indebted to misery,
my only friend--
we smile together and pretend.
credits to the wasteful end--
sucked into whiling for the moment,
drinking syrup while we wait.
the world's our only metaphor,
and we're the only race spurning
superhuman qualities
and ridding ourselves of death.

grooming

i'm the mower in my dreams,
killing for a living
almost by accident--
grimly scything swaths of grain
cutting paths to a paycheck,
animal friends bleeding in my wake with
eyes rolling gently to
the humility of death's embrace.
we feel sorry and move on. all
as merciless
as the
rotation of the globe on its random axis--
smiling softly
with a tightening grip.

finest

last lines, i exited-- you too, the mirror's comely locks--
serene, jasmine fragrant vagrant, the names of unborn children
echoing in your fleshly round halls and walks.
no man can forgive himself for
saying so much--
in the night time he names himself
for the cheapest of his hopes, toasted, buttered,
and wasted, scrapped like bad cable,
must not see tv at
its very finest.

oretachi

my company is mine
and we drink black coffee and pick apart
the teevee news in highway diners--
we scoff--
we sit silently smoking cigarettes
exhaling ash
from the half sunk side window of an economy car
in time to the music of a melting generation,
stressed and obsessed with their
recession babies and mayan prophecies--
elections, wars and reality.
we don't abide the ignorant
the religious or the loud,
anyone with their head in the clouds,
the mouthy smiles encased in waste,
the whispering midgets of social circles,
or the nonsense of the state.

we slam ourselves against the textures
of the world,
see the landscape folded up and regenerated--
hoping for the dawn of eyes wide open
the beginning of a dying age.

23

i became
everything i thought you wanted me to be
only to see that
i'm nothing but the shade
of an idea's tangent. i can't prove myself

until i'm gone. the wraith of my expectations

never let go of my high hopes.
funny how now
i'm totally alone.

when i leave (i know...)

you'll never remember me (except) in
mirrors and shades,
eyes you've scarred that i reached to grasp, the
last fleeting image of the light reflecting
their madness,
only to trace the outline of an impression
in a spotless plain.

and you've never heard anything i've ever told you--
there, tucked into the serpentine curl of your ear, i'm
littered in
the wrinkled songs of the drunk
and quiet, gently brushed and
trickled past breezy anecdotes and
softly spoken
words of encouragement
that always seemed to slide right down your hair
past your shoulders and disappear.

i'll never know
the strength you'd have found to be
the center of my life. the sweetness
you'd have shown to my smiles and apologies,
and the joy that would have flooded my throat and eyes
if we could have wrapped ourselves around
ourselves
and let each other go.

old friend

oh, you runaround american gal--
i'm getting sick to drink with you,
and having every moment stolen from
my nights working on immovable objects,
and weathering your neglect like
a stone made smooth by icy river currents.