Hungry so feed me
forcing peas
cigarettes
thankful for whatever
comes these days
well, brittle skinned
black and bruised
pieces of my palm
are pointing my fingers
and dabbing my prints
into diesel ink
for a measily sip
from the gauntlet's rim,
circumference is grim

Prison breaks
these days--
bumming a drag
and humming a tune
while the cool blue
sky reminds you,
you're alive,
so exhale for a while.

Blow out on the sheet
Blow out on the sheet
Blow out on the sheet
So I can feel you breathe

Cover up girl
Concealed to a circle,
Drawing the curtain
Never know who’s looking
Cover up girl
Concealed to a circle

Empty ash trays on the street
Empty ash trays on the street
I’ll brush my hair with maybeline
And pretend it’s snowing,
Fling a flurry if its slightly pleasing

Blowing on the sheet
(strolling on the street)
So I can feel you breathe
(holding on your collar)
Struggling to keep
(like we’ve both seen a ghost)
What we manage to eat down
Screaming in the wind
(screaming in the wind)
And its more like a banshee
(Cause it reminds you of me)
Steam comes from the hall
And its more like we’re drowning (seeing)
Sails and flags are waving,
Or waves are crashing flags
And our limbs lifelessly are sailing,

I'm an ugly body
on a dirty ground
I'm a smiling two cents
turned upside down
I saw a fake leg
fall in pieces
on a man who
played pretend
wasn't a pirate
looked like a giant,
may as well been,
and he couldn't
walk a straight line
but he wasn't drunk
and they kept him over
till he was sober

He's a lovely jet lagged
pair of metal wrapped around his ears,
signs his language,
says his name its never
how it appears in silver

I'm an ugly body
a double shot
and another round
falling asleep on a bar stool
waking up in portland,
a double dose of porcelain
does the body good.

A zig zag
became so good at zagging,
a chorus tried to coerce zag
to not zig;
mellow little zig zag,
thought that zigging would make him
an artist of the heart,
if he felt that zigging
described how felt
so he scribbled
instead of zigging,
and dragged his cuffs
instead of wearing a suit
that wasn't his.

"but life is beautiful
when the moon is full
your words are ugly
and you need to learn melody"
said a stern looking elder
woman from some crowded pocket
of family

Magically,
I zagged when I should've zigged
and everything tasted like
my family described--
like some sort of success
I didn't want,
some ugly poem
that read beautifully;
resplendence from a neon light,
and I wish, that I could die
but it wouldn't erase
the memory and marks--
the trace and tracks
desicrated deserted draftless
fucking disguised, and now i'm left alone
and not the alone I wanted
all this time

Everything I taste,
tastes like silver,
and my fingerprints are green
and my morals are dollars
and my family's digging my grave
and reaching in my pocket
all this time,
I should've zigged
instead of zagged,
g.r.w.h.s.m.30.3's./i.m.i.s.s.y.o.u.s.u.m.m.i.t.

I hopped a train
after my first stepped
we won't talk about that
Had a migraine
half way to Chicago
tried to catch my breath
Ohio, said goodbye
in German, Du buste vie eine der blume en
die vuste;

Made it through Michigan mom,
my bags are by my feet,
Made past Flint, Dad,
Let me talk to mom again
Don't seem too enthralled
to be on the other end

And i paid for the instance
long distance,
saying I missed you,
before I saw Arlington,
Chicago took the feet from me
and he became a memory
I'm sorry I'm not the man you see,
You'd thought you'd see at 20
Sorry I'm not the boy I should be,
carving my name in a tree
sorry its just the two in between
stuck in a dream
sorry its the two of me
and its all I'll ever be

And I've got blisters on my feet
that peel and bleed
from working every beam
dripped from me,
and I'll walk to way back
to bring Chicago back to me,
and bring Chicago back to me
and bring Chicago back to me

I'm never gonna be
a thing,
like how you thought
I oughta be
the only thing
you want for me
is what you thought
I ought to be
the only thing you want for me
is for me to be,
a spitting image
of misery
and you can take a wet dream
the family portraits
less evenly.

If I die in my sleep tonight,
its because I went against my will
deservingly my gums
fire do my gums feel
my insides--
"inside out!"
More to the hellish
tone to try and re-create
and re-enact
such a hellish act,
such a stupid act

I blame Freud,
before I blame myself,
and I curse
the very date
of my birth
for the worst of the worst
acts to follow to the first
is the last breath to swallow
because there's none after
to follow;
no roses to flutter
and fling to a stage
no cape but to flung
over shoulders and blades
no swings to be swung,
not curtains to be drawn
no encores no backstage
no "glory day" songs

And next I regret--
Oh just about everything
I've ever dreamt that I've did,
or said that I've done
to just about every stranger
I've known
or thought about knowing,
or acknowledged via motion;
the constant seperation
of myself as a person of
substance in a world without taste,
just because I deemed myself a person of character;
a person of worth-- a real hard worker ha!
hardly, the hardest profession, since the beginning,
if you'd beg to differ, it's a big book profession
outlasted recessions, professors and confessions,
so "shh.. me" and ah me,
and keep one last secret
before the tips of my fingers
lose feeling completely

"We're missing a step, or two,"
You're missing a lot more,
and you don't know what you want,
and you'll never get it either--
I'm sorry to have been the one to tell you,
but you'll get a lot more
and I pose in the mirror
once a look of terror--
"Dorian," someone will gasp
"No Non-Sense"
"Nine" someone will say in German,
"No-Nosxyl?"
"nine"
"Non-sense"
"syl?"
No, "Nine"
I'd rather look at the trees before they're damaged completely
and remember the summer,
lonely, anxious little summer I became a man before winter,
and didn't see the snow pile,
and stayed clean a full day. and died sober, a day or two,
but none the less died sober, happy, lov-ed, lov-ing everything and everyone family, familiar and un-the latter in which i've become unfamiliar.

try poetry
try ambien
try melodies
leaves begin
telling me
incoherently,
other than the language
of oranges and peach--
more of a mellow,
relaxing, asphyxiated salmon I'd have to agree upon,
do we ever speak on;
we mix our colors like spit
and our tongues' tips hit
and mix, and
we paint all the mysteries
of autumn,
in a language
that even smells nostalgic

and sweaters shed the scent
of closets, closed in corners
hung by hangers,
and sweetly
start to smell like smoke
and the stale cold staring down
your sleeves until they cover your arms
and staring down your zipper
until it covers your chest
and staring down the sun
till subsidized means ready to rest,
and margin and income
means the rest of the bed
is shared gain and fair game
so here I come

and there we share the mysteries
and secrets of autumn,
dizzy autumn
orange and peach
pumpkin and plum
and sour
and sweet, smooth
and clean,
wet in the street
in the gutter
but clean next to me
not near the gutter drowning to death
drinking to keep to their necks
by the flat of their backs
hardly not drunk swallowed half passed drinking to death
and man can serene seem like
decisions or eternity
or gambling or rambling
but i've been doing both
for so long,
my heads still full
but torn black jeans
have half full pockets
of winnings i never blew
they stay full
but not like they used to.