An Elegant Suspicion

It's an elegant suspicion
That holds me back again
I feel like I'm being lied to
By the dearest of friends.

Maybe Sigmund had it right
Or maybe someone else
But how can I know you
When I don't even know myself?

It's an elegant suspicion
That undermines my dreams
I can see that the world is
Seldom what it seems.

It's an elegant suspicion
That finds weaknesses unseen
And topples the illusions
To fall down at your feet.

Maybe Mr. K was right
To be paranoid and scared
How can I be right here
When my mind's everywhere?

And I can't go back again.
No, I can't wear that mask.
Sometimes the world is changed,
By the questions you've asked.

So it's an elegant suspicion
That undermines my dreams
I can see that the world is
Seldom what it seems.

I can see everything
Is seldom as it seems.

Marv Albert

What was it that I was supposed to be thinking?

Was it one of these overlapping voices in my head?

Well I tried the differential calculus and could not

Find the derivative of sanity with respect to my mind.

And what is that feeling angry, bitter within my gut?

Like a fist clenched tightly around my insides.

Such shame. Like a stifled laugh from a belligerent joke,

Fermented among a long-delinquent sense of humor.  

What am I to make of this desperate self-indulgence?

These sad, shaking hands scribbling mindlessly…

Illegibly--

Indiscriminately--  

With no regard for human life.

Poem for Rachel

Love is a word,

And only a word

A stand-in for an idea

A reference to a feeling.

It could not possibly be

Adequate for us, for you...

A word could not hold

The energy to race my heart.

It couldn’t express the fracture

I feel when we’re apart.

It is a pale shadow,

And a distant echo,

Of the thousands of touches,

Kisses and stolen glances...

Or the hard-learned lessons

Of being one soul.

Yet the word “love”

Is the best that we have

While our two hearts

Author something better.

In Search of Laundry Room on Record Store Day

We searched in vain
For the prize of the day
But around every bend
Was another dead end

We tried different places
Asked many vacant faces
But each glimmer of hope
Was a mirage where we'd go

And at the end of failed plans
We finally washed our hands
And bitterly realized
There would be no prize.

Not today.

Subservient

Subservient to you
To all your vacant notions
Underneath your shoe
Without any commotion

And I'm feeling tread upon
My head is hot with fever
When I lift high my thoughts
Your gravity holds me here

Subservient to you
And your dangerous notions
The many and the few
That serve with sad devotion

That I feel so put upon
Put upon like clothes
My head here, my heart gone
Left a sense of bitter loathing

Subservient... subservient
With time enough to fall apart

Deep Down, You're Not Fooling Anyone

Misshapen angels
Wings without flight
Relieved by disbelief
Of this desperate insight.

And all the while laughing
For after all, why not?
These misshapen angels
Know they're all we've got.

Fall back on superstition
Anything will do
Like bedtime fairy tales
Or mathematical proofs.

We all need to believe
We all need an excuse
So we can hide our scars
Like misshapen angels do.

Ordinary Relativity

Moving frame of reference
With no view of space or time
Lost my way in the confusion
Unraveled as I unwind

Knowledge with respect
To all that we can see
Trying hard to be
Both man and machine

Watching light bend
And dilation of time
Everything is relative
The law is the crime

Planet Nothing Special
Species ill-conceived
Gravity never needed
For you to believe

Untitled Experimental

we stood and faced a mighty insurrection
as cracks formed all around the galaxy
my armor of broken glasses and wool shirt
held strong against the university's attack
we shall forever remain uneducated
we shall forever maintain filtered ideology
we shall torture our math into limericks
our words live without grammatical consent

The Art of Disbelief

What's my place?
To agree or disagree?
To interrogate myself,
In the art of disbelief?

So many faces gone...
Like pictures on a wall...
While life passed my eyes--
Like Super 8 filmed-loss.

The unreported petty theft
Of my childhood dreams
Another hard lesson
In the art of disbelief.

A Fiction Understood

waiting on a door to open
waiting for a window to see
that i'm just standing here
trying so hard to disbelieve

living the lonely process
of me destroying me
yet i keep standing here
trying to be what i need

don't tie my hands together
or leave me alone to fate
i might pretend i'm sleeping
but my heart is wide awake

and there's a wide wide world
that feels most suffocating
when you watch it from a box
upon the lonely air you're breathing

there's a fiction understood
an illusion so profane
assented by necessity
to get through another day

it binds me ever tightly
and there is no abating
these feelings of desperation
and all that keeps me waiting

identity crisis

earth-shaking fears and the feeling of strangulation
by such recalcitrant tears that i hid like a child
and i didn't just hide but hid what i found sacred
in a thousand curses and blasphemies of pride

pride that grew from the rejection of my place
well, you can reject it, but it never goes away
it gnaws on your bones like a feral child inside
it fights for life in the space between my compromises

and it is with great pain very often sublimated
with great shame that i know who i am
that my name stands proud on the tip of my tongue
quickly bitten back into bitter subjection

and i taste the bitter blood in my mouth
listening quietly to my heartbeat slow, soften
i know that this moment is a respite
the child never goes, just fights to let me know

i'm not me at all, but the one i fear to show--with affectation
pitiful, vulgar affectation

cold sweat

addiction is motivation
blinders on and unaware
that the world was bigger
than a pill bottle
close to empty, began
its lonely death rattle
only one more dose
better vomit first

Raider

I walked these streets
Quiet and unknown
My hunger and my thirst
A guide to my feet
Feet that always carefully
Guided my eyes
To pages wild and alive
With the danger of ideas
Feet that sought masters
To bow then overthrow
With words that rang loud
Like the bells of freedom
These doors unlocked
To grant me entrance
Where others unyielding
And I, uninvited
Did conspire with fate
And ancient bound pages
Cherishing this artifact
Raided by a mind

A Time

There was a time

When my heart sat low

Searching for feelings

I wouldn’t show.

There was a girl

How there always is

She drank my whiskey

Smoked my cigarettes.

There was a time

My eyes were young

Not battle-scarred

By things left undone.

And she was crazy

Just like I was

We danced a little

Oh, just because.

There was a time

I was present there

I’ve long since gone

To the end of her stare.

And whatever mask

Love wears tonight

There is no beginning

And no end in sight.

Dark Here

It gets dark here
It gets cold  and lonely
Eternal and desperate
No garden to be cast from
Only images that flicker
Against darkened eyes
Sheltered by the night
Weak with fear and hope
Propped up by a fiction
Weathered by time
That crashes relentless
Into the promise of dawn.