If I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.

If I die before I sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I die before you tonight I pray the Lord finds my soul a delight.

If I die before the morning light I pray the Lord makes this sound right.


Let's fuck. Let's scream. Let's carve our names in an old oak tree and light the flames and burn that fucker down. I've been all around. I've seen your Ma, saw your Pa, don't you worry now that I'm back in town. And everybody loves a boxer's story. Everybody loves a morning glory. I'm the sort who'll get hit for money. I'll go down in the third round, tell me before the fourth. I'll hit that mat with a thump and a splat. I'll spray my blood. I'll come round. I'll stay there on the ground. I'll black my eyes. I'll be the one you lionize. I am thunder. I am flash. I am a thief in the night, come back round to steal your spine. I'm a ghost. I'm a ghoul. I'm the man who lost this duel. I'm a spirit. I'm a haint. I'm the devil, the blight, the taint. I'm a secret. I'm a sin. I'm the one who let you in. I am quiet. I am calm. I'm the eye of the storm. I'm a leaf on the wind. I'm a pile, a pit of sin. Drop me. Heal me. Kill me. Feel me. Beat me like a heart. Beat. Beat. Beat. Let's you and me settle that old score. Don't you dare call my mother a whore. I'll fight you. I'll kill you. I'll tear you down. Crucify me. Purify me. Nail me up and cut me down. Make me wear a bloody crown, of thorns and roses and bleed me dry. I'll be the one with eyes alight, until I die. Fire in them. Fire in the dark. I'm a flame. I dance. I sing, you can't bend me. I'm the wind. I'm the devil. I'm a sin. I'm the one who let you in.

Troubles and worries and terrible faults
Endless strings of garbage things
Banana peels eggshells old time waltz
Give me back that diamond ring

I'll throw it all in hells burning vaults
Eternal spring of lava burning
Carbon for the cycle, bile and salts
Hoarse throat, cracked voice I sing

God come down like a thunderbolt
Give your voice that lightning
Light me up with all my faults
Burn me in flames blue, cobalt

I am not what other people see,
I'm an iceberg in a mountain stream,
Impossible and endless and shallow and weak,
A torrent of contradictions and endings beginnings
Swirls forever never ending until it does
Until it ends,
Until I end

A very serious poem written by a very serious man in a very serious business suit

Tumbleweeds bleed sad sounds as they pass
Blowing away to whisper in tall prairie grass

Going somewhere, for a lost lover perhaps,
Or maybe to sit, look up, and watch clouds pass

I hate to watch you walk away
But girl,
I worship
dat ass.

couplets for absence

That song might not be about me
But every song is still about you

Some nights I go over all the pain
A year after we've been through

You said I'm nobody and a fool
Well I'm somebody, still a fool,
that's true

------------------------------------------


I just want to explain,
This is for me and not you

I write it out, my pain
in black ink and in blue

You don't have to like the refrain
But for me it's still true

I think about you when it rains
And when the sky's blue

These words are for me
They are not for you


------------------------------------

Emptiness, in seven different ways:
1. Bed
2. Apartment
3. Fridge
4. Love department
5. Bank account
6. Employment
7. Work Prospect Amount

When I was twenty three
And in love with someone
But she didn't love me

I said a prayer every night
That she'd wake up
And see the morning light

And I hoped that would
Make her fall in love
With me, for good

But she never did

When I was twenty nine
And in love with someone
Who told me she was mine

I said a prayer every night
That we'd wake up
And never ever fight

And I hoped that we'd
Stay forever in love
Together for good

But it ended

(poem on hiatus until the author falls in love again)

I love you all, my darlings, my little glimmers, you were all so beautiful and happy once, and sadness came and washed over you. Then that record spun, didn't it? Oh didn't that voice sing then? Didn't you hear something inside of you then? What's the opposite of hearing a bone break? What is the sound of something mending? Only you didn't know anything was broken. What's the sound? What's that sound? I know that sound. It's my mother's voice calling me to breakfast, it's my father singing me to sleep, it's the feeling of hair being brushed from my closed eyes, it's the breath of my lover on my face as she sleeps face to face with me, I know that sound, I know that voice, I've seen those eyes, I've walked this floor, I know this road, I know this wind, those flowers, the wash hanging on a line, the trees rocketing out of the ground, the green grass, oh my god I'm so in love with you. I'm so in love with you.

I
Love
You

All

In Response To The Dating Profile Of A Woman

A challenge then. 

To prove one 

Against many. 

To prove equal 

Or more. A second 

Must prove itself 

Equal or more 

To the massed weight

Of many long days. 

One night must prove 

Worthy of days spent 

In pursuit, and flight. 

There are seconds 

And nights that find 

Themselves equal to days 

And years and lifetimes. 

Sweet stolen moments

From eternity that echo 

Forever with ecstasy. 

A second can 

Last 

A lifetime, and a lifetime 

Can 

Be reduced 

To a second, 

No less. 

A night can be reduced 

A series of seconds, 

Beautiful like pearls 

On a strand.

A hand pressed, 

A breath trapped 

On the edge of release, 

An eye held 

Within an eye, 

Legs and limbs 

And sweat and lips 

And tumbling seconds 

All of them, tumbling 

Moments like a strand 

Of pearls falling 

Through fingers after

Let's fall in love. Let's do all the things we dreamt of doing when we were in high school. Let's drive around in a car and listen to all the important songs. The ones that say how we feel. The ones that only we, the lovers, can understand. Let's make out on the hood of that car, under the stars. Let's wish for this moment to last forever.

Let's fall in love. Let's do all the things we dreamt of doing when we were in college. Let's drive to the coast and read poems to each other. The ones that say how we feel. The ones that only we, the lovers, can understand. Let's lay in the sand, listening to the pounding surf, holding onto each other until the sun comes up. Let's wish that it never does.

Let's fall in love. Let's do all the things we dreamt of doing in our twenties. Let's fly to Paris or Thailand or Peru. Let's take pictures of each other in distant lands, pulling each other forward by our hands. Let's stay out all night in a strange city and dance and dance until we stumble back to our hostel in the morning. Let's get lost and take the wrong train together. Let's buy stupid little statues from strange cities. Let's wear sunglasses and kiss each other holding our cameras out and taking pictures of ourselves at the same time with one eye on you and your eye on me and we each have one eye turned towards the lens. Let's wish that the vacation never ends.

Let's fall in love. Let's do all the things we dreamt of doing in our thirties. Let's get a dog and a house and have kids. Let's stand before all of the people we know in really expensive clothes and tell them how much we love each other, and swear that we'll never let go.

Breathless

let's be breathless

 and die 

and let's let our lungs empty out

 so the slime 

from one side touches slime 

from the other. 

Let's let our bodies deflate

And lie 

And Let's let all the air out.

So that time 

From one side touches time 

From the other. 

Collapse your diaphragm.

 Let's, us, suffocate, 

Untitled

Horrible lantern heart.

 Darkness instead of light.

Good metal rusted 

pumping the smell of blood 

crumbling things 

never ending decay,

 only spreading, breeding, seeding. 

In the dark, 

in the wet hot dark. 

The breath of something 

coming. 

The breath of a jungle cat, 

the breath of fever 

madness, 

the breath of something wounded,

wheezing 

 Death, dying itself,

 but spreading

dying out, 

Blood letting
death leak out 

It hunts and stalks in the depths of the earth. 

Untitled

For a moment I saw infinity

In your eyes, it burned then

When I realized they,

Your eyes 

are the same color 

as the skies 

and the oceans 

and the earth 

and the stars 

and flowers and rivers and streams

I'm lost in them 

I'm lost in them 

I'm lost in them 

In those pools of forever. 

Forever in them. 

Lost forever. In them.

Gone forever. Gone. 

In them. Gone. 

Gone forever. Gone. 

Gone. 

Untitled: mood hopeful and joyful and a little bit hungover

This little spot is the earth where our feet dance and tread and stir the mud and the sky is so blue that we cannot dream of any other thing in its place and our hearts are so pure and young and beating to their very last in this dome of starlight and lovely birdsong a sweet sweet garden of things to taste and try and a sweet sweet life of pain in paradise hold onto me my dear holding on to you hold out your hands I'll be with you soon oh don't swoon oh don't start we'll never stop I promise my promises were never worth very much anyway just a thing to say to the wind to the wind who is my god my goddess my lovely lovely shrine is built in my heart I have no hearth but if I did I'd welcome you to it and I'd sit down by the fire and look at it dance in your eyes nothing has ever been sweeter to me than the breath of another the breath of a lover the breath that stirs like a gentle wind in the garden oh let us go and walk together, let us go and talk together let us go and be and be still and be unending patterns of things it doesn't matter who you are and who I am we are just masks the universe wears because the universe is very clever and loves to play games with itself because it is very lonely to be everything and to be the play of light on darkness and the play of darkness along the borders of light and it is very lonely to sing a song alone in the emptiness so she put her mind to work and she made us all out of herself inside herself and here we are wondering at the big open spaces and we do the same thing and I love you because I love me and because you and I are she who made us he who made us it doesn't matter its just a mask that matter wears for a while we're spinning little tornados of energy and isn't that lovely like the bath water draining out of the tub and oh my dear don't hold your breath for so long just take the plunge take the chance take the risk the dancing is fine and the water is warm and the beat in our hearts lasts only so long so strike up the band and sing us a song your voice is beautiful but more than that I will always love your eyes sing hallelujah to them and sing the mountains down from their lofty seats and sing the clouds up into the sky and sing of your eyes I will weave a dense web of words to capture their energy draw them, paint them, shine them bind them hold them, oh my darling oh my dear my danger my heart my heat my light my love my life upwards shoots let us float on up into the air, let us stop the pain for now let us be merry let us sing how beautiful the plains and the forests and the mountains and the oceans and the jungles and the deserts and the canyons and all the beasts that crawl upon them and swim in them and fly over them and you and I are beasts too, and we are also beautiful and this night will never end and this day will never end and we can hold on to each other forever and never ever need to part ways, but let us dance in the dark under the stars one last time, one last slow dance together breath to breath eye to eye heart to heart thigh to thigh and let us become one again when we die.

What strange clay, what soft hands, what soft lips, what marvelous heart

We become our words. We become the thing that shapes our words. What kind of words leave your lips? What kind of thoughts leave you? Is it poison or salve? Do you get hurt more and more as you speak? Harsh words cut our own lips as we speak them. If you were to cut me down you would only cut yourself down. If you were to build me up you would build yourself up. If you were to build yourself up you would build me up. Yes we must say what is in our hearts, but we are the hands that shape the pot already spinning along the wheel. We find ourselves in the middle of this act of creation. We find ourselves covered in clay, hands slick and sticky as if covered in blood, and the clay slips beneath our fingers as it spins in a circle. What kind of heart, what kind of pot are you building? What kind of thing are you becoming?

Are you happy with your pot? It is a shame that one cannot stop the wheel. But you can know the parts of your pot that you are happy with and you can refine them, encourage them. So my dears, let me say that I love your pots. Let me say that I am lucky to behold them. Let me say that I am grateful for the time that I have been blessed with. Let me say that I am grateful to have my pot. Let me say that I think both of our pots look beautiful together. Bless you. Thank you. 

Written 4/7/15, same reason as last post

Fire, thunder, big earthquake

You’re the one I cannot shake

Fearing that I’m not awake

Slap me kiss me fuck me feel me. 

Wake me take me break me make me. 

Written 6/5/16, published because you'll never read it

Every night before I go to sleep I try to scrape myself clean, on the inside, where my heart used to be, before I ripped it out and told you to go, I drag bags of broken glass through my veins, I pull them on a strong thin thread that I weave through my veins with a needle, you need to make sure that you do this because hearts can grow back, they're tenacious little fuckers that come back when you're not looking and they can start breaking and bleeding at any moment. Mine usually tries to come back when I'm lying in a bed without you. Without my arms wrapped around you, it pumps blood all over my sheets, and I lie there and sob into my pillows and wish that I had scraped myself clean by looking at pictures of you, and remembering the fights and not the softness of your skin and the smell of your hair and the way you'd look up at me, catching me looking at you and say "what?" In that way that you say it that just causes my heart to gush blood like the Deepwater Horizon well gushed oil into the Gulf of Mexico. I'd like to cut my heart from my chest and put it in a chest at the bottom of the sea, but it would pump blood into the ocean whenever I go to sleep, running my hands over the empty spaces where you used to fit so snugly against me. Pumping blood by the barrel full into the abyss while I stare up at my ceiling thinking about how you'd put your retainers in, and how I love your laugh, and your brown doe eyes and long lashes, and how I wish you could wrap your arms and legs around me and I wrap my arms and legs around you, and how I wish we were different people that matched up differently, and how maybe then we could have stayed together and I wouldn't have had to cut my own heart out of my chest and thrown it into the ocean. 

For You.

It snowed today. I thought of you all day. I'm filled with my sins and regrets, but loving you will never be either. I broke. I'm broken. I'm mending. I'm on the mend. I've got a week left of cigarettes. I've got a lifetime of push-ups ahead of me. I left you in your car. I cried at work all week. Going to the bathroom thinking of lying in bed with you. Thinking about how you kicked me out of bed. Thinking about how I couldn't stand up to you. Thinking about how I need to stand up for myself. I need to get myself together. This time next year I want to be happy. I want to match my insides and my outsides. I want to be healthy and free. I hurt myself on you and the pain was delicious and addictive and I want a thousand more cigarettes and a thousand more kisses. Sometimes you have to let things go. I'm not your villain, I'm my own villain. I'm not a hero. I'm not nice, although I really try to be. I've got a hatred for my body. I've got a soul full glass shards slowly turning into sea glass. I'm a box full of useless treasures that a run my hands through and hold up to God and hope that at the end they'll all be worth something, or at least worth the gathering. You said you don't know who I am. Well neither do I. I never have.

We start out as these beautiful little things screaming our heads off in laughter and pain and lately I haven't seen a change. I lifted my nephew on my shoulders and wished so hard I had someone to lift me up. I guess I have to learn to ride around on my own shoulders. 

Untitled Bullshit.

I am the mountain that weeps snow.
Burning brightly in the sun.
I am the forest that cries leaves.
Red flames falling gently.
I am the river whose tears burst its banks.
Brown and raging with white foam caps.
I am the prairie which bleeds flowers in the spring.


The wind is my lover and she has gone from me.
Taking with her all the scents of my youth.