Zero Hero

i suffer just to breathe
and only pull in my own razor blades
down my throat
and through my teeth

we bomb the shit out of
our enemies
holy airstrikes, batman!
just like them,
we slaughter the "bad guys"
and with them the fear,
allegedly

we kill the "bad guys"
and lots of good
guys, and gals
who could have been friends.
we're bad guys to them.

another epidemic turns pandemic,
the wars will kill us first
faster than the virus
and dehumanize us
and an immune system shut down
to beat out a government shutdown
is still prettier.

the american dream
is an expensive suicide
go broke for your diploma
a receipt
then papercut yourself with it
til you bleed

and suddenly my wallet rules me
I am not what I love nor what I create
Suddenly I am defined only
by the numbers in my bank account
(zero, nada, nothing, zilch)
and by the grades I make
(failure, incomplete, below average)
Zippo Zero

When will society realize
that happiness is not quantified
that freedom is being free from the material
(not this illusion of freedom)
and all our imagined problems.
We occupy our minds with useless
Bullshit, most of our "problems"
aren't real, and
the more leisure time we have,
the more we don't have time for anything
or so we say
or so we think
can someone please explain that
to me?

Dear Sam

Mischief finds those that fly
from place to place and time to time,
Echoing through the chambers of our heart, we
beat on, against the current, racing minds and the
Organized chaos of us whirls round
and round and round
To stop,
Who knows where, why, and how
This discord will bind us or destroy
Yet either way, we anticipate
the outcome, despite
the drawbacks, we
stay.

But you're still lighting fires and I,
armed with lefty scissors,
still go
berserk
from time
to time.

Memento Mori

Dead men tell the finest tales
they echo in our hearts
and burn our lungs from the inside
like the smoke from the cigarette you light

A dead man walking is the finest thing indeed
When you read my words you watch me bleed
A curse held by those who leave a legacy
Drowning in sorrow and swimming in tragedy

Profundity comes with a price
Your soul flees early if you roll the dice
to make it big, to win the game
To gain your glory, fortune, or fame

Dead men rot before they ever hit the ground,
Misery by the mile and headaches by the pound.
No matter what their hearts desire and eyes seek,
Madness for the brilliant and boredom for the weak.

But even dead men who seek no success,
Locked in a room - o'er page, under duress
May find their disposition has sealed their fate
A minute too soon is a second too late

In the world of the living, the dead men wait
Break down the door and open the gate
to find freedom from their earthly bounds
Rebirthed from our sighs falling flat on the ground

Desperate to find another way,
All that we gain is what the dead men pay.

River Rats

Shine and Smile
Smile and Shine
take out your trash with the night before and
carry your baggage with you
since no one wants to keep it
what are we but a series of mistakes
all a mess so 
what's one more?
The accidents, a promise
The potential, possibility
Tired of being told no 
being told what to do
being told anything other than
you are loved 
and you love
happiness is just a mistake away
and with these weak words 
I set the stage

To hold interest for long is not 
my habit, get bored and abandon
or jump ship before I see sails fly
into the horizon yet
I'd let the gangrene set in before I'd say no
to you
before I'd get bored
of you
before I melt in
to you
A strange addiction yet
what isn't
and why wouldn't 
strange be the case with you
when all else is spastic stories
and oddities,
another lost soul flying into the night, looking
for a reason 
Yet falling short time and time 
again, never finding
Another gypsy heart
as free and so as lost 

Until 
Now? 

Tick Tock Motherfuckers

i have too many thoughts in a day,
too many wants in a year
i drive myself mad with
contrived dark alleys and silhouettes
waiting in the shadows for another punch drunk love
climbing out of my wreckage just to make some more
hating it all but enchanted by it still
too reluctant to admit it
a stone cold bitch hiding a melted heart
but the Music, 
oh the Literature, 
holds me together and tears me apart
yet keeps me running like a broke down engine
with a false start and rusty wheels
creaking along old faded Time 
yelling in the streets as i wander on
itching for the next explosion 
an interest
a passion
ambition
relentless and unguarded as a war
an untainted and curious infant
who has not had the imagination 
the creativity
the life
beaten out of them yet
by that relentless bitch Time
which, though invented by us all,
still commands every dripping second of the 
dying clock
murdering us back
throwing caution 
and laughter
to the wind

Mess

You harden your heart because you have to
sift through the wreckage of the world and
tear apart everything you once knew to be true
we're all just a mess 
yet who'd expect any less?

Ode to Nikola

You
with your Electric Heart
it tore yourself apart
while you were listening on your
Cosmic Phone
sending signals to the stars
receiving messages from mars
more powerful than zeus,
You forge those bolts and
command them, they are your own
birthed amidst a storm with a
fire in the sky,
foretelling your future while
lesser gods sit on olympus pondering
why they have never created anything so great
3 by 3 and 9 by 9
Pigeons rest on your veins, telephone wires
AC lit up with your Light
and you still live, all around us in the static
and the energy of the Earth, you knew
No one ever did any better
Not any money mongering fool drooling over dollars
while you stayed awake at night to craft
the next Advancement of man
We can never repay you enough
But to speak your name at any chance
Shout it from the rooftops like a lover mad
Part of me now and part of me soon
In heart then in Ink
Permanent
Unrelenting
Real
Electric.

Unfinished.

I cannot stand it
I never could but now it is building
All I have are these words and they cannot caress me
They cannot comfort me
like other human flesh can 
but I have no one and I want
no one because after a while all their
faces blur together and their 
names taste the same and their
habits get just as irritating. 

One soul.
That is it,
one person 
who has never
enraged me. 
One friend.
That is it,
and I can pretend
and grin like the rest of them,
but I am not with any of them,
I am of no one,
And all I lov'd - 
I lov'd 
alone.

Perhaps
I am in a cage of my own making,
by refusing to be caged myself
by any wand'ring eye, not
lending a chance nor 
passing the time. Perhaps
I am my own Holly, sans cat
sans name and I've only yet to find
my own Paul Varjak. 
V-A-R-J-A-K
Is it even a possibility
W-R-I-T-E-R
another lost soul 
wandering in the distant and impossible
valley of humanity

It seems
I only love dead men
who tell many tales and
seem more interesting and 
tolerable than the living ones. 
It seems
I do not know the meaning
of the word I seek, so 
wander aimlessly, so
someone show 
me. 

The Motions

They claim
high school 
preps you 
for college.
Their doped-up, dumbed down
absolute shit
of 'education' 
is what high school
has turned into. 
Thank you Mrs. Solberg
for teaching us history,
making it challenging,
giving it meaning.
Thank you Mrs. Jordan,
for giving a fuck
your crazy hair
you care.

tell that mick my requiem

I want to be surrounded by
creative minds pulsing like mine but
every corner I turn holds another
unimaginative whore the women don't know and
the men know less be my oasis save me from my desolateness
whiskey on my breath I try to relax but I can't and I'm
alright with that because I can't get no satisfaction
thanks boys for the tip
I'm talkin bout the stones but you can make it
sexual if you so wish
and why should 'i' be capitalized?
it might make me sick but i'll make the decision
to spoil my own lungs ears liver blood but
he can't be a man cuz he doesn't smoke
the same cigarettes as me
dancing like a flower child maniac i
find myself in the twirling fabric and laugh
at all the souls held captive by their bodies and this woman
all mind and all heart and all
legs tells you to join her but you
refuse and aren't we all just lost souls
anyway?

portrait d'une femme, deux

i just want to be 
in folie à deux with you
a madness of two

Smack

The walls are paper
Scream shout knock yourself out now
I will not tell (oops)

In Class

Mother may I take two steps forward
toward the edge
never to come back
Bright young things
Come to call and find their end,
their fall and flight
Mother may I read a sonnet
of Death and Dishonor
the turn comes with
"Motherfucker"
Mother may I 
write a word or a line
as you take your time I roll my eyes
Mother
May I
Mother
Fucker
May I never ask for your permission
as long as I die. 

Strangers

Bookshop
Little old lady
sitting on the floor
sifting through paperbacks
shifts as I move toward a shelf
don't go, you are interesting
right where you are. 
turns to me and scowls
at the cell phone in my palm
Little does she know
I'm writing a poem 
About her. 

Empire 
Cafe
Four 
O'clock
On a Wednesday
Odds and ends inhabitants
Businessman train wreck
in suit with cell phone
Professor or hopeful
His hat as his table partner
One of them sits behind me 
I do not see him so I cannot make a
guess
So I will say pirate
He is a pirate
And then there was me.
Oh 
Toasted bread nestled in 
Red sauce
Should have got coffee
But that was

Agora at noon
Lazily chiseling at
Ancient Greek translations
Appropriately. 
The jukebox made a mistake so I 
Looked like a radio fool but
Oh well. 
I want to ask the man behind the bar 
what
The inscription in the music box is but
My nerves deter me. 

Burroughs now sits 
with me with his
heroin fits and
cut up heart bleeds
of the future with me.
And then there were three
Raviolis
My last dollar goes
to the waiter

but the caterwauling test of 
Reality
it was not enough nothing was ever 
Enough. 
that was my every 
Day. 

Strings

I haven't been myself lately I've never been myself and I 
Eat your fear like a lollipop dream beat the clock and 
Drown me dare you take me up up and away today every day never
And I cackle like the wind when I see that we're all just
marionettes 
dancing

Dog Burned Alive

I can't even write
a poem about it 
when I cannot even breathe
through the tears
but what can I do but write
I cannot stop it 
No one ever can
We can't even escape 
When we'd have to run from our own thoughts
Because even if we get away 
We will always remember
Surrounded by all the ways 
People destroy everyone eachother everything
It clouds all else
And detracts from anything any of us could ever create
When we destroy so savagely 
Everything we love
and everything we hate
I've cut with words before but
never with a knife
and half the time I want to take the words back
I feel like I'm dying
nose bleed
cut me
deep

Papercuts 
heal me
I'll bury myself in pages
in a fortress of books they'll never find me
you'll never find me
alone here
the only place safe
in my books every day
I can feel a cancer 
growing in my stomach 
I hope I'm dying
Can't stand the humanity 
Light me aflame too
Murder me 
Burning in the night sky like
a dead star in flight
The Fight never leaves me yet
I've surrendered already, laid down like
a dog in the street
Fire heart of 
Gasoline 
Eat me Drink me Forget
anything for the sake of 
not remembering
Bleak 

War Crimes

A violent pacifism
Shoot em up Sunday
with syringe or with
other weapons
Either way you're 
A killer,
babe. 

Execution holiday
Body burning up
Tell Sally I'm sorry
I love them
I loved them all.

Douglas Feldman said
Either by fact or by proxy,
I find them both guilty. 

Brian Turner said
If you hear gunfire on a Thursday afternoon,
it could be for a wedding, or it could be for you. 

Desert Son

He was killed for the illusion of freedom,
called a hero for being shot in the back
when he wasn't looking
By his own country.
It is not a defense
That reaches its greedy hands out
And plucks a man from his home
To be killed by those
That don't want him there,
And of them,
or maybe even by
His own men.

Our religious harlots are not the same as theirs,
Perhaps not as bad even, 
Here they only hold distasteful,
Shameful signs
At the funerals with flags 
over coffins
over lies,
The men they were supposed to love.
They speak daggers at us,
At anyone who is not a perfect mirror.
Usually
Their arms race is dealt in words,
like poets,
but lacking both grace
and character.
That is here.

In a desert where an oasis 
Red with blood
Washes the intellect out and
can help no one
Some find solace in
Ripping apart schools
With gunpowder treason 
and plot
how to tear down another
Couple sky scrapers.

Here they are called insane
and evil.
But we are the same
to them.
And think,

With these "first world problems"
and pet palaces
and peeves
and ice cream,
worried about supplements
and SUVs, crying
over people who
Don't exist. 
We hunt 
only for convenient parking, 
Heaven forbid
We are made to walk. 
Hell dictates
We do. We are all
insane. We are all
evil

As well as good,
some more than others
some less.

We are all the same. 

Moira

Who invented
this form of problem solving?
The only solution
in this brutal equation
Is an answer to overpopulation,
A body count. 
They say
Go to war
They say
Defeat thine enemy
And victory
Is killing more of them
Than they kill of you. 
In what twisted world
Is this a victory? 
One more I have killed
Becomes
One more I have outlived.
This is the way
I suffer.
This is the way
I survive. 
And as I step over
Another fallen corpse, 
Metal and leather and flesh,
A sensual river of red running out
And joining the stream,
Filling a sea of carnage
in an ocean of Death,
I come upon the ruler of this land,
Not Ares nor Athena nor Zeus, 
But a being that is not,
To be nameless is to
Be faceless, 
To be faceless is to 
Be immortal. 
And to be faceless, 
Having no identity,
You can take other forms,
Skin a man and possess him
And wear his face as a human mask
And make the owner of that face
Inhuman.
She finished off
One of my fellow fighters,
Having picked him out,
Stalking the field,
Waiting to possess
Another unsuspecting soldier
From the opposing side. 
She did not kill my comrade, 
She defaced him,
Slaughtered his humanity
to the point of being
Unrecognizable. 
Then she turned toward me,
Greedy in her ways,
Soul after soul
Never being enough.
I wanted to ask her why,
Not to beg 
But only to know the reason
Behind her madness,
Organized chaos 
(Eris would be proud).
But her look suddenly changed,
And something overcame her, 
(It had to be a she,
For who more fitting to take life
Than the one who gives it?)
And she spoke to me
As a mother would a son,
In confidence,
In comfort. 
"I've been searching for you vehemently, 
my love,
Seeking you out, yearning
Yet to meet you.
You have been avoiding me carefully,
Consider me depraved, was is anew
The horror it was when you first began. 
I rip through your brothers,
like papyri, 
limb from fluttering limb,
red again.
But I do not seek to dismantle you.
You are far too precious for that old fate.
My next vessel of Death shall be you,
If you will have me."
And with that, she
Invaded my soul,
No time to ask my
Burning Question,
No Reason. 

           This life is not mine,
Much as I try to pull in my own reins. 
The Force fights the will to survive, and Death,
Bittersweet, comes to us all in the end.
Now I will deliver the fatal blows, 
And graces will shrink as grief ever grows.

I.

She wrote of a titan's fall
not on olympus
but in Brooklyn
She wrote
She made me understand
that event
and the extent of it
She wrote
and I hope
like Hell
I pray
I never pray
I hope
That she is still alive
Not only in words but in body
for how could such a modern 
marvelous woman
writer
sister
witness
Not survive this?
She showed me
I've never met her
She showed me
the art is not dead
and hope for peace is not dead
and we are breathing
"maybe hurting,
but breathing for sure"
she sings this to me
in black and white inside my head
In black and white there is division
and exclusion
Still.
Why? 

Higher Education

A B C s
1 2 3 s
flash bulb buzz
misogyny
Twister heart
Hellhound blues
school's out, pussycat
Plain & True.
Sprawling dolls
Dorm room brawls
A caffeine coma
and bad alcohol
Fearing Life
doesn't work
Like a rich bitch hipster
It all hurts.
contacts in
Eyesight's out
Like stars & stripes
and jello shots.
Lobotomy,
Lobotoyou,
smell of last night's study
wakes up on the Floor
with books piled high
as a chain smoking whore.

Love, I am Ashes.

And when you finish the words
you have a cigarette
just like
naked in bed
under sheets. 
Sweaty, 
satisfied,
complete.  

Ties

In times of trouble
We are united
But not as people
as a country
you create a common enemy
'Them'
they are wrong
No
YOU are wrong
Is everything not all
a piece of everyone? 

Sleeping with the Enemy

Humans
are in a coma
arise awake asleep
Defeat Me.
The conquerer-worm frowns
at the bitter flesh it's offered now
We laugh at it, tricked
into our fiction reality

Americans
are in a coma 
Burger-induced
Bible-beating
Bleeding ourselves
and everyone else
Dry with disease
yet lacking empathy
Destroy our only home 
And shrug.

Writers
are in a coma
Ballet of cliche
Entertaining
selling copies
Nothing Groundbreaking
nothing
new. 
When's the movement?
The next one
it's been a while now 
Literature abstinent
from FUCKING BEAUTY

It is now, 
You only have to open
your eyes
your lips
uncap your pen and
Make It
or else. 

Truth or Dare

Can you be an activist 
with just words?
Many say no, 
the same many
that do nothing at all
Don't even have
any words
or thoughts 
of their own.

Back Alley Classroom Surgery

In poetry, there are no rules
There is no formula
And if
you carve
it up
like
a villain
you will most certainly
Butcher it.
It comes
from the soul, 
Not from a pattern- 
Cookie cutter, 
Sewn together. 
Sown into the ground
Buried, not planted
THERE IS NO IDEAL
It pours from you 
You do not create
You bleed
The words out
They find their own way
They were always 
there. 
And when the words finally fail,
music succeeds. 
Can we please
not deconstruct
Can we please 
not murder words
Like people murder people, 
neglect
serial killer
mercy?
hospital bed
punctuation
Rupturing an artery
a vein
a heart.
Sending boys
and now girls too
to war
equal in death
before dying
Pawned off to
Skeletonize.
Flags on coffins
say we
won. 
Let it be
they sing on
the streets and in
the churches and in
the shower. 
Break the circle
rupture the pattern
the pattern
the pattern
on repeat, 
The Beats
bleed
You cut them
deep 

Us

War creates money
Sell your soul for a flag and
Never get it back
"Liberate the people"
"Stop the terrorists"
The terrorists are HERE
White men just as much as anyone
Whether they wear white hoods 
or business suits
Repression of freedom
In this illusion of freedom
Structural violence
Works quietly, maliciously
Staring at the invisible enemy
Throw some paint 
Exposé
Illusion of security!
Take off your shoes,
TSA.

I have always been
in limbo. 
Neither here
nor there,
I see no division
I see no solution
When everyone wants to name
an enemy...
Wants to lay the blame 
I am not an American
I am part of the human race
I am an animal
Part of this planet
this galaxy and
this universe. 

I refuse to be
brainwashed
into your reality
Where no one is connected 
So no one can love,
not really. 

First the Mongols ravaged
and now the Americans 
who perceive themselves as more civilized 
but are the most barbaric
ripping limb from limb
They are people too
They are people too
Do you hear me, soldier? 
Do you hear me, citizen?
'They' are us.
They are people too. 

Come Closer

Why would you equate 
Bad table manners
With a career 
in what some argue is 
Performance Art,
I will never understand.
This culture
The Un-united Cult of America
Is shocked still by
S E X
Remains of a 50s mentality
Outdated
Sedated
Unthinking
Unaccepting 
Adhering
You are too keen
to call anything at all
that you don't understand
Weird. 
Don't bother
Trying to understand. 
Why?
I do not understand
Y O U
And I don't care to
But I don't call you weird.
I call you ignorant. 
It is more accurate.
The days of great thinkers 
Were swarmed with orgies 
Pederasts
"Sodomy"
And now you shelter yourselves
And now there are no new ideas. 

It started with the church
Shaming Sex
Shunning Sluts
We are all sluts. 
Smash the patriarchy 
Not to establish matriarchy
But to establish
True equality
Finally. 

Sex is not shocking 
It is natural 
The one true union
Not your rings
Not your vows
Not your celibate priest 
Approving this union. 
Do not shame it 
Just to hold the puppet strings
of your congregation
of your pulpits
of your citizens
of your countries
of your students
of your schools
of the children
in your womb
Do not shame it
And brainwash all others
And anyone at all
Who is naive enough to listen. 

Kill Your Darlings

You would imagine
Two writers in love would 
Kill each other. 
I wouldn't want to live
any other way. 

Robbed

In the innocence of 
Childhood, we see everything. 
Magic
is not imaginary.

In the innocence of
Childhood
We see nothing,
hidden from our 
false idols and
half-truths
Then shell-shocked
We stumble upon it. 

Worth Words

And the words infect my blood
Like an illness I'd love to die from
Buk had said, allegedly,
"Find what you love and let it kill you" 
It sounds like him, and I believe it. 
If the words can take me, 
Like bullets,
Let them. 
They already do.
Something's gotta kill you. 

Infected by the beautiful disease of poetry, 
If you must ask why, you are immune. 

Activism

Trapped in the moment forever
We are all stuck in time
A painting
A photograph
Life does not imitate
anything
Crashed and Crumpled 
to the Ground
Now still living
So it goes. 
We are all ears 
on the floor. 
Keep the work open, 
Keep the wound fresh. 
There are no rules
in War nor in 
Poetry. 

Fashion Clasher

Stripes socks shoes
Choked with plaid
Clad in dots
Buttons up your cup
Of solid coffee
Spots round the rim.
Peppered with age and strife
Your life speckled with color
Solid gold 
Ring
Heart
Lines
Dividing time
Strangle us and your wrist
Patches hold your life in objects
Our eyes are framed
For what our mind reveals. 

Ageless Aging

Speak to me
I love you
Tell me now
Take care

Brittle yet you hold me up
Fragile strength can fade
Or fossilize
Mummify

Flesh to bone to dust
A death's head island surrounds you 
Your decay dripping onto the forest floor
Yet more grows again from you

Natural cycles, circles
You came in
"You Ruptured The Pattern"
And we hang you up again to learn

Fascinate
Oscillate my limbs
until they sing of sorrow
Follow you to Dust
"Spin Cycle Submission"

More bare and beautiful than ivory
Poached from a morgue
Given by family
Or a vagabond wanderer
Wandered here now
Not of their own accord
Like anything ever was

Puppet strings
Danse Macabre
honor your horror 
We love you all,
We owe you, all.

After the face fades away
The bone does remain. 

The body farm,
Our friend. 

The Injustice System

Order, order,
Chaos! Chaos!
In this courtroom
A chamber of lies
Feed me the facts
I will swallow them all
Give me the details
I'll spit them back at you

Sustain, sustain,
Disprove! Disprove!
We sentence you hereby
To the axe, the blade
But we don't swing it
Oh boy, no way
That's for someone else
Who didn't decide your fate

Uphold, uphold,
Obstruct! Obstruct!
Even you could see this coming
But we could see much better
A law-like machine
Unyielding and unthinking
I calculate your fate
With the formula of laws. 

Why Wait

I have no faith
in Humanity nor Divinity
A harlot, sacrilege 
Yet fate still smiles on me.

Forked tongues and sharpened lies
Light the way to the
Church on Sunday

And I sigh, never
Content nor obliged
To yield or die.

A vagabond for always,
A forest in her eyes,
A prick at her heart and then
A leak til it's dark

It starts
And I wait,
Half our lives 
Eaten by sleep
And the other half
By waiting. 

It lingers
Yet never returns,
Shadow memory
Of a lost
epiphany. 

Never mind

And your voice is
The soundtrack to my suicide 
Sickly sweet over and over
"Humanity, you never had it to begin with"
None of us did but
Some of us pretend. We
Drown our lies sorrows hopes
In liquor, in love, in fear
In loathing
In Las Vegas. We
count the lives
Until we live. We
split our skin, sin
A beautiful word but
God put the horns on it and
killed us all in the crib.
What a hypocrite
"And I belong to this notebook and this pencil"
They are my God because
they are all I have and
If I lose the writing, I lose
Everything.

What comes to mind

While reading headlines.

Good riddance.

Where is what?

Oh no.

The WORLD has lost its mind.

How sad,

Go figure.

Lincoln told bawdy jokes?

Ellen isn't cheap,

How dare you Mr. President.

No wonder.

How did anyone allow that,

50 times?

Tornadoes are not 

God's spinning wrath

You GOP twat.

Good for her,

I already know,

I don't want to know. 

WHY.

Okay. 

Go sisters, do it your way.

Good riddance to DADT 

Once again.

Noooooooooooooo

A thousand times

I can't take it

So I have stopped reading the news.

I can't handle 

The state of the union anymore

...Until next time.

Put me on

Screams and shouts may knock you out

But murmurs do excite you

Cut up into wares and wastes blending in the wake

Bleeding in the day

Boys on the walls stare in anguish

Trapped in a frame and glazed over in printed death

Begging for another chance to be remembered

As more than a photograph 

Take a picture it'll last longer

6 seconds too long 6 seconds too late

We spill and fill over and under

Hell welcomes you in the icy wastes

'The warrior-poet has passed on' and we make way

For a weaker state

of mind slow the pace

yet I don't know how and 

I can't wait