words

when life gives you lemonade
reverse engineer into citric elements,
corrosive, cowardly
in their jaundiced hues

the electrolytic impulse spent,
anode and cathode separate
so that no juice may flow,
a breakdown derived from weakness,
the filament stressed and severed,
cracks in the crystalline lattice,
atomic faults mental in form

the side effect,
the progeny,
effortless in its grace
like nature,
balanced perilously
across positive and negative,
alighting in the electron beam,
circumnavigating the endless stream

all things equalize in the loop,
unyielding in its spin
i am but a witness to some greater process
that i can not control,
that i can not touch,
drifting, floating,
dancing, dreaming.

2019sm

dogs have no patience.

cats roll dice forever
in their little feline skulls.

their sharp glances
penetrate the quiet substance
of thursday evenings,
lost in the endless string
of zeros and ones,
ons and offs.

nothing nothing

2015sm

i always leave at sundown when god has pastel yearnings,
the naked trees silhouette lung branches,
baptist church lights on the highway,
dim fires in the outer realms.

2015sm

hands inherit the memory,
large,
now,
awake to the serial stream.

fuck your opinions,
small,
take more pictures of yourself
and share them among the lonely chorus
of all these descendants of equal nothing,
all of us here expecting something more,
all smiling the same frozen horror,
forever prepositions,
poetry lost in criticism,
tomorrow maybe,
blue squares afraid of space.

2015sm

juggle these thin differences
up and down and back and forth
like,
low batteries, low fuel gauges,
low balances, empty glasses,
pockets, wake up slow fears
crawl through dirty thoughts,
personal fences erected
each morning to be contested.

earbuds conceal differences
as we stumble past ourselves,
one another in the blank delusion,
look side to side,
anywhere but at one another,
so different, so different
no reason can be come to
in the ritual canvasing of each other.

stake claims to very important things,
prices at the supermarket,
coupons and rights are no different
so long as we agree on the terms,
barcodes, indignation, privilege,
arguments must be had now
or the blood will remain unresolved,
guns and land, nothing more relevant to now
than that which is current and tangible,
ideas are transient.

money every two weeks,
over again over again
the small arithmetic grips like panic
as zero approaches,
is everything taken care of
or is this another in the long lineage of close calls,
failures and cousins of failures,
uncles of nothing,
we the dark underlings of promise.

2015sm

distractions are much more welcoming,
more present.

all moments equidistant, nothing changes:
we open our eyes
and begin to claw wildly at the immediate sphere,
protesting its intrusive nature;
the world gets larger, then smaller,
atomic indecency.

each night presents a familiar struggle,
a war that never ceases,
only a changing of circumstances.

don’t drink, don’t dive deep
in to that pool of masochism;
measure the risk by carcinogens,
don’t smoke, don’t breathe in the punishing judgment.

a moral philosophy envelopes the argument:
merge with thine enemy,
drink, the stopping point is that brief interlude,
the thin hallway where truth and the id touch,
it hums distantly.

i do not witness or participate in life – i digest it.
a form of sustenance
whose cousins are the same miscreants
i labor to strike from my blood;
another addiction, another passive stream
to feel ashamed of for our compatriotism.

i feel it, granular,
tiny nodes that hold the truth of things.

powerless against this torrential swelling of calculus
containing rapidly changing voices.

the subconscious dances,
sings at such frequent delivery of company,
no matter how sad, no matter how flawed,
the great irony the loneliness of this.

eternal collisions produce warring factions,
there is only one aggregate response moving forward:
wake up, continue; resist, allow; breathe in, out;
fumble the many choices
and predict that one greatest sum.

the head a gateway to the world without,
the challenge becomes keeping it forward, focused,
not drowning in the sorrows of this little planet,
these fellow beings who are by illusion separate,
in truth the same,
all bound by the same ultimate fate.

i do not fear death,
i have lived it before.

2014sm

short and to the point,
an eviction of local demons
however friendly,
hoever familiar.

however many awful things lie in the heart of our hearts,
spilling outward this ancient dam bursts,
flooding the narrow pathways
like tributaries leading back to that capillary temple,
the spread of thought,
a disease we cannot be rid of.

cleansing, mortal depth,
branching outward from the first moment of awareness,
we are all born with this.

2014sm