February 2012
36 posts
1 tag
He tells you that he loves you
and a flower dipped in water
coloured like coffee won’t testify against him
Yeah a 3-piece suit as dark as those
sunk, shadowed eyes you fell for
cause he spoke the words and looked as though he meant them
But suits and flowers and cigarettes
stand testament to your regrets
from that once upon a time when you were younger
When the world of man had...
1 tag
You wear pride like a promise
tangled in the pomp and pity
So what if it is I alone
who kneels within the city?
When he sees a thing worth worship,
when there etches in my brain
a cloth bound call to nervousness,
a heist demanding frame
It’s the sheep who walks to slaughter
it’s the wolf who will devour
But the man escapes the metaphor
by refusing to cower
1 tag
I took your hand
the wind advanced
but wove a circle
while we danced
I wrote a song
that pressed the sun
to two blue coins
your eyes undone
I drove a car
through hurricane
to hold you warm
within the rain
You took my hand
and slowed me down
lest in my fever
I would drown
a boy with hopes
to give the world
forgo the quest
to know the girl
1 tag
I left your house
because you kicked me out
angry at a salsa stain
on your powder blue blouse
A weak winter
and its crisp wind
take to my chest like assumption-
the upside down trees in my lungs
and their alveoli leaves
awaken in springtime inhalation
and wither
in autumnal ruin
I suppose you haven’t been taught
that a year is just a breath
to the world wherein you worry
1 tag
Trendless Lament in the Endless Cement
Leave the haiku to the Hipsters
would that I could love like them
I’m the flower that’s corsaged so long
it can’t remember stem
I’m the organ grinding music box
so soft, so sweet, so sure
I’m the calendar-front calico
the cute without the purr
And you laugh because I hold you
like the war was coming home
I laugh because it’s working
cause I’d...
1 tag
The horrifying thing about moving on
is that sometimes later, you remember things
sharper
and you’re not prepared at all
for the terrifying anguish, you once called life
1 tag
(I broke) like a storm
like a rage
like a wave
(when you) like a knife
like a fire
like a grave
(spoke soft) like a ghost
like a whim
like a tune
(and said) like a bolt
like a scream
like a wound
(you’d love) like a song
like a swoon
like a dream
(me like) a tempest
like a bomb
like a scream
(you miss) like a mark
like an age
like a youth
(the dead) like a child
like a...
1 tag
The future is a factory
with mechanized morality
propaganda, sophistry
and shocking lack of shame
The future’s exploitation
but without an expiration
just a dwindling celebration
till there’s no one left to blame
The future is a land dispute
with every owner resolute
each patch of land to prostitute
as if we never die
The future is seduction
steeped in sweat and sin and...
1 tag
On My Mother's Birthday
If there is a son
elsewhere
saying he has a better mother
I’ll fight him
and I’ll probably win
even though I’m not that tough
Then I’ll call his mother
and apologize
(I don’t want her to be sad)
cause moms are great
even if their sons
are dumb fight-losers
1 tag
Hope We Had
Hope we had
I think it died
it split
there was a song inside
with too much strings
it shook the town
and sounded like
a ship gone down
Hope you had
you tried to give
to everyone
you hoped would live
in spite of sadness
spite of violence
but every word came
wrapped in silence
Hope I had
I wrote this poem
You read it loud
as if alone
and wrote and told
me of your heart
Hope I...
1 tag
Surely ran the river
steady beat the sun
and often bloomed the orchard
where you and I were young
Innocent our meeting
awkward was our growth
I said you’d always have my heart
my only honest oath
Fickle was the future
wandering our souls
and broken were our backs by packs
and earth exploring goals
Musty was the pub booth
cold the wood veneer
you said you used to love me
it...
2 tags
When it came to reckoning
and all the sad sex and borrowed time
began shifting hateward
you asked me- no, you demanded I tell you
the last time I remembered you wearing something sexy
and I said I could only remember
your clawing steel blues
staring from your end of the bed
in a world turned horizontal
I wasn’t a poet yet
I wasn’t sad enough
And I was honest
That was all...
1 tag
Down to the letter
of some ancient alchemy
your nostrils carved
like wind on against porcelain-
too beautiful and subtle
for any but the eternal to understand-
those who see trees as tulips
and forests as flower beds
but smaller still
(and frolicking)
they see you
They sent me
to tell you “thanks”
1 tag
To the Only Woman I will Ever Pity
Your spine is a lighthouse
Your eyes saving lives
Your heart is a dock
where no sailor arrives
and the difficult dinners
the romances undone
stand as stones for the lovers
you’ve conquered and won
2 tags
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is Valentine’s Day, so naturally, I’d like to talk to you
about physics
Dripping honey, the other 364
today is for cold -ever cooling- space
In short, the relative affect on the fabric
of both space and time
by anything possessing mass.
Most impressive of these
(in my infinite bias)
is the human-
capable of warping the very fabric of reality
just by...
1 tag
To the Son I'll Never Have
It is important
that if she likes daiquiris,
and this whole fucking cosmopolitan french thing
-that made your dad a lover, a smoker, a poet-
is still as sharp as a well cut suit,
you don’t hold it against
her smile
Lest you miss falling asleep
in a neck crook
as deep and soft as eternity
1 tag
Steeped in shade of sycamore
under awning oak
beneath a balsa blanket
the little king awoke
and every eye went looking
while the faithful scrambled round
forgetting fast the riverbank
where peace is always found
So we grow old together
watch the generations spin
as their heels whittle the wide world
and they dance upon a pin
And you and I are patient
though we may not have belief...
1 tag
Atomize the firebrand
breathe the passion in
love lite tastes like something,
feels like nothing on the skin
like you calculate the madness
like you orchestrate the pain
like you infiltrate the mystery
and you imitate the same
No, it’s not a song and dance
No, it’s not a lark
No, it is a fucking blaze
Amidst the deadly dark
1 tag
Sweet Dreams
Underneath the waves
a thicker storm doth rage
and monsters and their teeth
turn red the raging sea
Below the murky depths
where no camera has crept
a darkness so hard falls
that there are no eyes at all
But arms, my dear, and hunger
a million groping lips
to feed upon the foolish
who remain on sinking ships
And then what of dryer darkness?
When the world falls out of sight?...
1 tag
The Way You Look Tonight
I want you scorched in celluloid
Immortalized tonight
I want your curves preserved and captured, sharp within this light
Saying nothing of tomorrow
I will make no claims on you
I want your youth myself, before age does what age will do
If love is truly blind then why
were lovers given eyes
and memory so fragile it might fail before one dies?
And eyes you have, and lips
and breasts,...
1 tag
All the saddest soldiers
who’ve come marching back from war
are absorbed into the fold of fools
both elegant and sore
that their battles scratch their pocketbooks-
who are convinced the nightmares end
when the bullets are not flying
at the hill you must defend
Like there’s monster in the metal
like there’s shrapnel savagery
like the borderlines, grenades and mines...
1 tag
It’s honest, it’s real, and it’s heavy, my dear
The silence of shyness, the crippling fear
the rape and the racism, torture and theft
the starving so pure that there’s no hunger left
the wide world of worry, each one by themselves
a true murder’s worth in the mind that it swells
and we’re walking around, and we’re reading our words
like we’re...
1 tag
In Defense of Death
There are skeletons of shipwrecks
in the graveyard of the sea
no longer slaves to waves or waterfalls
pretending that they’re free
1 tag
I held you like a bannerman
as musket balls whizzed by
This is why we’re dying, love
yes this is why we die
I tasted you like memory
I smelled you after rain
This is why a poet’s hope
can sometimes sound like pain
You came
you saw
you conquered me
you ran my spirit through
you burned ex lovers trinkets
but then made me nothing new
I sang you like a shattered hymn
a...
1 tag
My breath
was spent
ancestors
dirt
I asked around
The world’s been hurt
The rich
are starving
smiling bones
the starving,
starving
and alone
depression
scars worn
uniforms
and pills
for wills
for thrills
forlorn
for me
for you
for we
forgot
the weight
the world
the dead
have bought
but pain
it rests against the heart
and living through it
well...
1 tag
You said there was twisted mathematics to excitement
and a brick in your stomach when it fades
but then I went and resurrected your cat
that died when you were 9
and took you to the roast of Joan of Arc
to throw pinecones in the fire
and say nothing.
“The world needs its martyrs” says I (later)
“They’re something like perennials
in the world of hope”
Then I...
Alright, listen tumblr. This is to show someone my...
1 tag
Your love
is like a cup of water in the desert
suspended out of reach
on a fishing pole
held by a not so attractive woman
in the middle of a sandstorm
My love
is stupid enough to not recognize mud
1 tag
It’s quite unremarkable really
Just fall in real love every single day
with eyes, always eyes
Feel guilty for your ancestors
your countrymen
your sex
Look at stars for their story,
their distance, and their death
Travel the world
Temper your loneliness
in the fire forge of liquor or pills
Sing when you can
Taste your food
and
Embrace your sleep
And so poetry will live at the...
1 tag
Sunday morning, 5 A.M.
Sweetest muse
your machine steam
reminds me monthly
what it means
to fall apart
but now in show
I thought my heart felt
how to know
the way to fall
apart herein
you are my ruin-
musing sin
And here against
our lives now old
the texts are sloppy
the feeling cold
I wish I knew
what words might mean
to dying muse-
to wonders seen
Your figure, murder
Your mind, a curse
My...
1 tag
No allure to words sometimes
like I’m typing towards
that hot coal that sits near your heart
cuddling on a bed
when you know for the first time
that the love is gone
and suddenly
her head on your chest
weighs something
1 tag
Deleting Poetry
Because sometimes you need to set fire to your past.
1 tag
That night my voice was lily white
I saw you in the crowd
my caress came through the speakers
but you melted just as loud
and the strings under my fingers
when I sang the room goodnight
they bent so pitched and perfect, love
we knew the gods were right
with their fucking and their fighting
cookie cutter patricide
the million monstrous massacres
a pretty song might hide
and I found...
1 tag
A recipe for living at the bottom of the bottle
it hits the air and quickly fades away
I checked again a thousand times and thought I would remember
but the recklessness kept getting in the way
Now I’m empty like a beggar’s bowl, a hoping grope for coin
but finding only hunger in your grasp
I’m sad y’know, in honest,
and the drink has done me in
I’m telling...
1 tag
For the Lonely
knock knock creak smile
hands wring lean in
cheek kiss linger
take it all in
foot over stoop
sacrificial lamb
didn’t sit until invited
then I did, and it began
built from the ground
into my head to fight the fear
the moment never happened love
we were never here
dawn breaks, knife blades
yellowed out of bed
never let to lie there
not even in my head
1 tag
February
Let the future forward; there’s much that we can be
a river is a puddle is an ocean is a sea
when seduction sounds like honesty, and silence like a prayer
the dove it flaps arithmetic to float upon the air
All the angles that we mangle into to sense and sophistry-
Let the future forward; there’s much that we can be
January 2012
22 posts
1 tag
This is a reminder
that this is a world
wherein Shakespearean scholars
are English majors, rather than lovers
and monsters
1 tag
I wrote you words of longing
a living, breathing art
but you cried for the tornado
that tore the museum apart
Memories with nametags
would never have appeared
lest the lovers come before us
had conquered what they feared
So I write you words of longing
and I pin them to your door
If you wait till it stops raining
they won’t be there anymore
1 tag
Perhaps you could fill a warehouse
with the things I do not know
but one thing I am certain of
is that you are an asshole
if you don’t invite me
to that warehouse
1 tag
your eyes too deep to mention
your ear a whisper’s theft
your voice demands attention
your curves command my breath
if I’m red within your favor
if I stammer at your hem
if my songs of worship quaver
well, I broke when I wrote them
1 tag
Pressed against the memory
the elegy, the heat
the river runs nostalgic
washing yesteryear’s defeat
It’s honest like we’re dying
it’s panicked like we’re young
it’s tired like the morning
where our hopes are softly hung
And if I promised you forever
well I’m sorry for the lie
but a life can be love song
and a poem can be goodbye
1 tag
Some mornings like this
stalking sun like a heron
my bones remember I was young
and it is
powerful.
Not the cocktail bar hypnotist
Vegas magician “power”
Not the short skirt
tattooed pheromones of the day
But the light of something too big
not to burn you hollow
Some mornings like this
I bought a necklace for a girl
in my grade six class
But wore it a couple days...
1 tag
Suddenly over dinner
and out into the car
you tell me I’ve grown distant
that my gaze has gone afar
and you beg me for an answer
what has muddled up my eyes
And my interest plummets further, love
My blue look never lies.
A doctor to a broken heart
a pity for the poet
a bleeding heart to now restart
my garden and regrow it
but some grounds aren’t so secret
some land is...
1 tag
He wants you to be thinner
a wisp, a waif, a wish
I just want my hands against your hips
He wants you as a sinner
to stab, and scratch, and steal
for the ready-made excuses on his lips
He listens looking elsewhere
he smiles like it’s a gift
I wrote a song, it’s yours, if you would like
You’ve never really caught his stare
except one fateful night
Now he’s yelling...
1 tag
We are not our measurements
we are carved in fear
opal, onyx, amethyst,
we were never here
Open mouths carved jagged
terrified to be alone
on a thousand gold museum shelves
preserved in ornate stone
And the tour guides call it history
like a dam to stop the tears
We are not our measurements
no, we are carved in fear
1 tag
I think I read a thousand somewheres
that you scrapbook your obsessions
but you have to paint a picture with your love
and I acted like I heard it on some mountaintop
within a wind that whipped the tired
feathers from the dove
But truer than the parapets
that hold princesses and regrets
the words, the keys, the kneelings of submission
a kiss, a crawl, an opera
the goosebumps that will...
1 tag
A plague upon the minds of men
intoxicating sin
remember what your ribcage held
before the guilt broke in
It was never my intention, dear
I thought innocence would hold
but curious I left you
in your absence grew so old
Now they’re tearing down the swingsets
cause a boy, he broke his arm
but to deny the rest from flying
well, that’s all the more the harm
1 tag
Did I tell you I love you
that night you went honest-
naked with the notches of your spine
Each less embarrassing
under my fingers
until the small of your back
was as big and beautifully honest
as your cut-short blush
moving new beneath my hands
Did I tell you I love you
among our talk of scars
and Goethe
and other men you loved
I loved you
but you were way too big
to act so small...
1 tag
We were young and passionate
a lover and a friend
the world would bend beneath the wind
but we would never bend
We shook mountains and bedposts
and our words could make god bow
we thought that we would kill him
but we never figured how
Then I became a poet
and you began to sing
amidst this choral mystery
we didn’t know a thing
My verse would herd the breathless
your voice...
1 tag
Whosoever reads these words
are poisoned by my pen
set to die a poets death
and read to die again
are trapped at night in wood trimmed rooms
we breathe and bleed in tune
Whosoever reads these words
they feel them like a wound
Whosoever saves their lips
from the storytellers cross
from pressing ‘gainst a strangers
-silent eloquence of loss
have enamel white-barred prisons
where...