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.

east

night air mutters through the window
blowing notes bending by the tip of the bottle
i lust for with the intensity of
the misses i've chanced recently,
according to the same boredom,
drawn out to fit to a T and
nagging me in conversational tangents and daydreams.

blame me for believing, for having at it like
an old romantic, for doing and thinking
the type of stuff that won't be in style
maybe ever again. grinning and grooming,
soaking in the anticipation of what would
turn out to be most definite failure, another night of not
measuring up, untwisting the gentle letdowns from
the sweet flowery embellishments of their packaging.
she's still looking to the sky, or something.
no one seems to get theirs in this economy--i should know. but i never will.
thank you, ma'am, it's time to go--i guess you've been too kind. now watch me fade
beyond your hills, this sweet horizon line

dawn again

what ripens and keeps opening
the bloom of a sunday morning
looking on into monday night
still cleaning,
clinging,
lifting her eyes
to me slowly, the hint
of a wonder on her lips,
but dashed on our cadences slowly,
unrevealed, unwrapped,
overbearing and underwhelming,
unheard and unsinging,
the unknown joys and sorrows
that she's slowly bringing