a dice game of someone formerly abused

i hear the screams all in-between the pages of my mind

they’re all i hear both far and near completely intertwined

within the layers of my soul i know does not exist

i want to see things clearly now but all i see are mists

 

obscuring truths deep in my youth where love was ill-defined

a cancer that will never grow eternally benign

and now i feel no one could love the who and what i am

unless i please and turn the keys to be the kind of man

 

that you could love and want around a most exhausting thing

cause every person’s own idea is what i try to bring

and dance with this dichotomy of being who i am

a wounded soul who wants control to be within your hands

 

where i’m informed how to perform to be acceptable

when all i really ever am is just susceptible

to any thought i might be loved that i just roll the dice

for all i want is to be loved and will pay any price

 

***

 

 

 

 

by definition

artists are not the criminal element

we are the degenerate elite

an act of washing feet

in the realm of the gods

 

what one would call depraved

by it the artist is saved

and venerates with a negate

we’re masters of our own mistakes

 

***

thinly sliced

they’re in the hemisphere

i’m in the atmosphere

they’re clouds of confusion

obfuscate and veneer

 

leaves me as one

who seeks only love

but isn’t love a sort of

if everything they dispose of

 

leaves only the part

you play as the horse

before the cart

 

you circle and storm

wish to be reborn

find no one to share

the you you’ve stripped bare

 

so you sit in your chair

puppet on a string

bringing or brought

you leave everything

 

like words on a page

conversation in a glass

you want to be loved

but their caste system has cast

you down in your shoes

world turning blue

as people starve for a clue

but don’t even know they are hungry

 

you sit on a bench

crowds hustle by

plankton in the sea

while you’re a god in the sky

 

yet just one prayer

one upward glance

and i become a mere mortal

in love with romance

 

because whatever love is

is what you define

and your definition

definitely becomes mine

 

and yet i’m alone here

high as a kite

and when we’re together

i’ll leave off the light

that illuminates my mind

because wanting to be loved

is paramount

then finding someone i could love

 

***

 

tipping the scales

i watched the sunrise kiss the sky across the desert land

and waited for the promise i would be a better man

i went and drank my herbal tea upon the gentle shore

and found that i was only me no less and yet no more

i prayed inside a marble church with pillars to the sky

and exited its hand carved doors still every other guy

i read the books of every faith slept on a mountaintop

then harvested a bale of hay like every other crop

i brushed my teeth and washed my feet, said please with a thank you

and found that i was only me and you were only you

so share the best consume the rest and love your fellow man

but don’t expect the stars to dance or even clap their hands

what the dark streets of decay knows

someone said i must be silent

because i’ve stopped being self-violent

saturated in sobriety sipping netflix

no late night hop-scotch or pick-up-sticks

 

my words were rapids in my mind

an angry surge with axe to grind

but lately they lay on the floor

cause all that lingers in my core

 

are pills and weed and whiskey white

gutters are an insurmountable height

a pack a day, sex on the side

don’t ask me the color of their eyes

 

cause nothing’s in my head at all

my sea is empty if you trawl

i’m blatto, blitz and wasted hard

i’m dancing with a disregard

for anything but feeling numb

a hitchhiker with missing thumbs

 

***

the layers of los angeles lay upon my skin

l. a. born and bred

culturally underfed

 

i’ll lick your neck till i infect

your vagina with my semen

 

brawl for no reason at all

 

if you got it

          i’ll smoke it

          drink it

          swallow it

          drop it

 

and i’ll look good doing it

 

i saw a man on a sidewalk

no legs

laying on his belly

playing with a toy

everyone walked on by

in l. a. you have to be pleasing to the eye

and…

well, that’s all that matters

to matter

 

right dress will impress

superficial ugliness

 

don’t talk to me

if you do

i have the right to be rude

nobody talks in l. a.

this ain’t wisconsin

 

l. a. people listen to

whatever they are told to

hip and cool you learn in school

media moguls make up our minds

our lives are a daily grind

but we look good doing it

 

on freeways you pay the price

everyday a huge slice

is cut out of time waiting for to traffic to move

 

i’m not talking suburban dwellers

attics and cellars

i’m talking concrete and gray

holding sway

delineating your limited view

 

but we are the chosen few

an address makes us cool

and i walk these golden streets

i was formed in its womb

in l. a. we hide the tombs

notice me and i will live forever

no need to be clever

if pocket pads are the new fad

and you act like it’s something you always had

then you are in the know

 

and yes we’re all on drugs

prescribed or otherwise

listing a stars filmography

makes you wise

 

the internet will not protect

your anonymity

you will upload and be exposed

and hopefully discovered

as long as you don’t mind

getting under the covers

for hollywood fame

 

there’s nothing new here i proclaim

i play the game

the real problem is

i love it

 

***

 

 

an ex-patriot of expectation

“death is not the result of excess

death is the result of being born.

birth has a 100% mortality rate”

- john young

 

i’m coalescing with a constant complaint

oscillating in the ovaries of my mind

with poetry i paint

the me you can never seem to find

 

a year or so ago i wrote

about a night of wandering wasted

relayed how i passed a bar

making last call

the piano woman was singing

“hello” by evanescence

 

how when she hit the line

“don’t try to fix me i’m not broken”

i tilted a full bottle of whiskey

until its entire contents

splashed into my depths

then stumbled off to an alley

where my next memory

was the sunlight of tomorrow

 

i’m thinking of that night today

people think i had lost my way

but i feel more disjointed

in this long stretch of sobriety

 

you see, that was me

now every day i get a slice

of someone’s advice

while i hold back the holler,

“i’m not broken”

 

why i’m sober i still haven’t figured out

i lace the lingering with a layer of cigarettes

knowing i’m the only one who sees

there is nothing to see

there is no decree

to the way we should be

 

yet everyone will assess upon my death

the lifestyle is what killed me

not comprehending i am free

 

make firewood out of trees

i distrust those who must

smell the odor of orderliness

 

life is an experience

and when you no longer exist

you will no longer experience

 

yet you concoct the cocktail

of a comet without a tail

it’s an omen of what will prevail

 

it is

and then it isn’t

and that’s all it ever was

and one day the isn’t

is all that will be

there is no order to things

just the graveyards of gravity

 

and being me

is the meaning to life

not the me you need me to be

 

and the fact my awareness

will acquiesce when i am dead

is something i am looking forward to

 

your force impacts an unmovable object  

and i only object

to your clearly defined lines

drawn with vanishing ink

 

“you just don’t get it” i think

you talk, i blink

 

you make my perceptual conceptions your cause

 

i no longer consider

 

i am not bitter

 

your scriptures are not the word of god

because there is no god

and i can’t join in the fraud of your fraudulence

 

there is no correct stance

within a circumstance

 

where you will never see

i do not need to be or not be

you just want the recompense of recognition

revered for your wisdom

after all you are on the side of right

 

eradicate the blight

so the harvest will be edible

give your senses delight

 

you’re hitting holes with a mallet

i burrow deeper

where the sounds of your strikes

echo in the tunnels of my mind

the sound of improvident effort

 

i don’t need to be what you need me to be

your arm will give out

before you can guess from which hole

my head will pop out

 

laughing at your referendum

regulating the game of life

 

you aim at my aimlessness

i light a smoke to see

which way the wind blows

then head in that direction

walk amid the dissections

singing,

“don’t try and fix me i’m not broken”

 

***

 

 

i’ve never walked the western world while wearing winter white

hold up at has been hotel

i hear the secrets

that no one will speak

but everyone tells

 

worked out

lit a smoke

still sober

on diet pepsi i choke

been awhile since i spoke

even longer since

i went for a long walk

 

a few can feel like forever

when it was all that held sway

wanderlust on the dark streets of decay

 

taking stock

a few volumes of published poetry

two published novels

writing a third

voices heard

end up here on this page

 

no new direction

prescription pills are my protection

from all that inhabits my mind

 

changing gears helps you go faster in the grind

but there is no where i’m in a hurry to be

 

cause when i get there all i will find

is the me i wanted to leave behind

 

common denominator

carried by feet

till i am beat

from all the running

 

the drinking didn’t stop the drumming

of the beat i didn’t want to walk to

 

nothing will undo

the ties that bind

the thoughts that crowd my mind

 

i can burn my kingdom down

abdicate my throne

 

roam alone on concrete and stone

but the persistence of my existence

will remain with insistence

 

no, this is not a suicide poem

i wouldn’t give anyone the satisfaction

but as the lyricist laid down,

“you don’t know what it’s like to be me”

 

oh everyone tells you how to be free

from the traps in which i am entangled

but changing my perspective

only supports my argument

that it is all perspective

 

save your holistic guru goulash

for homes that are clean and posh

 

this structure is condemned

abandoned and waiting

for the dance of decay

to have its day

 

and for science to answer

the only question that matters,

“did beatniks bounce their babies

after breakfast?”

 

***