Two Funerals For The Price Of One

They propped the dying couple on elevated ground
Stood them up like mannequins rotting in the rain
Attached puppet strings made of government contracts
A pastor reads aloud from a book of necromancy
And the lovers read suicide notes to seal their love
With two words uttered to prompt the invisible killer
Now they kiss and share their poison (as good lovers should)
Before tossing a bouquet to another victim
God have mercy on these poor dead today
A stretched hearse takes them to a five star cemetery
Where they will be buried alive in suburban dreams
To decompose into each other, losing all feature
Until none is left but a mass of colorless and unfeeling flesh
Look close enough and you'll see a flicker of identity past
But it's just a child choking on the pull of their carbon rings

Beat Poem

I've ignited the forest
Sucked it through
Glass
Found that asteroids have
Angelic voices
Like infant cherubs

And I saw
Graffiti on the moon
Said that sex is god
And He is always
Judging us

And I witnessed
Saturn's rings implode
Particles of
Divorce
Love attracts but grinds

And I was there
As Atlus wept
Said the weight was
Too much
He put the Earth down
And wrapped himself
In cellophane

And I came back home
To admire the beauty
Of the burnt forest
To chill where smoke
Is always engulfing
Us

And to pray
For the cherubs

God Bless/God Damn

Our parents intercepted the cell signals
Hijacked the towers with ancient verse
Now the purpose is perfectly ingrained
Brains filtered through unread pages
They say “let Heaven absorb every midnight.”
It's been dark for a thousand years
And all the candles are wax over forlorn mouths
We wasted them trying to read stone tablets
Commandments will not save your children
The trenches are overpopulated with bullies
Byproducts of animosity don't give a damn
Look in their eyes and see the real true
When you were bloody and ashamed again
God didn't reach out his hand, as believed
Just another friend with a thousand backs turned
Childhood stumbles by, punch drunk and traumatized
What do we believe in if there is nothing for us?

Straitjacket Love Affair

I wish for a polygraph as a dowry
Because God knows I don't know
Do you weave reality or safety nets?
Rather sky-dive to Hell than get tangled
Shrug off compliments to avoid strain
My tangled spine is weary from plastic anvils
A teenager falling in love with cardboard cut-outs
Look close enough and they resemble flesh
Hell, I can't even tell the difference anymore
It's all a split second blur before the car crash
Where flames burned away my trust like skin
This faceless man loves you regardless
In spite of the paranoia that gives him shape
Silent minutes march on like brainwashed soldiers
They aim, shoot, fire, and hit
Lodging slugs in the flesh of a black hole

The Art Of Beating A Dead Horse

Strewn about a rusted bucket
The grinder's teeth are a distant memory
Fading from life.
I'm so used to cinder blocks
And atomic bombs strapped to my back
That the ocean floor is now my lover.
My deep blue everything.
She injects disease into my skin
When suicide notes get too boring.
Another night snorting ashes of dead poets
Has diluted my blood to the point of enigma.
They'll never identify me among the waste
This gutted city screams with every gust
They carry the torment to daycare centers
And animal shelters for the sick
The mind is a labyrinth of numbers
I find myself counting cliffs like black sheep
Under the overpass and over the fence
Childhood wonders as if it's normal
I've satisfied the bloodthirsty onlookers
Now staring at my reflection in the sun

Crush On Me

Highlight response
Push in
Thrust
Accomplished!

Matter of roses
Wrapped cholesterol
Feigned melting
Plagiarized proposal
All for love
(sex)

Disintegrating girl
My whole world
Pebble around Pluto
Hourglass sand grain
Peasant harlot
Thinks royalty

Adorable ignorance

Passing grades
Cheat anyway
Countless promiscuous nights
My cross hairs aimed
Target the lonely
Taken to cotton dreams
Never seen again

My love
The only one
Questions with puffed lips
Angel harp strings choke
Knuckles across cherubs
Heel to the heart
Black and blue symphony

Now take coitus
A few dead presidents
Forgive me

Show the stars
Elusive smiles
Tell the sun
Glitched forevers

Once jocose butterfly
Now leper caterpillar
Terrified Wonder Woman
Innocence dams the ditch
Lifeless, gutless, soulless
Mine forever
Our Rohypnol romance

Bless Me, Yesenin!

Forget sunshine
Fabrication of Helios
Stalker's orange eye
Hidden when sought
The false cure

Dandelions bleed
Black ice drip
To grass undeterred
And a lovely oak
Dressed in winter
Sings “Boys Of Summer”
Outside my window

Damn the girls
Speaking in poetry
Sonnet love notes
Iambic break up letters
Thought I find the one
Twenty five times wrong

Damn this place
Dried shell off orbit
Ground to brimstone gives way
Weightless depression reigns
Pushing down the sky

Wave goodbye to Russia
I, who crumble
As ancient castles seized
World's last speck of warmth
Constructed to subpar knots

Watch me swing
Left
Right

Then stop

AMBER

Think about it
A doll
Stripped down
Torn from aluminum skin
Perpetual last supper
Sun worshiper
Followed God into winter

Plastic pillar
Now solitary
Stationary
White as lies
Every bone shakes
Desolated dance floor
Paranoia in a disco ball

Time
Youth
Missing children
Ashen posters plastered
Ghost town intersection
Remnants sail hopeless breathing
Disintegrated into pollution

Breath in
Then out

Cancer is here

Self-Help In A Baggie (poem)

Bless you
Lord
I am me
Free
No nerves
Severed soul
Heart held hostage

Smoke engulfs
Highest percentile
A choked out
Gag reflex
Nothingness is pink
Bluebird bliss

We scraped it off
Night-life tumors
Brain tissue bred
The neoplasia orgy
Breezed away with rust

Bless me
Lord
I am me

Soil kisses the sky

Laundromat

The flaw of worry, the humanity it shows. I find myself methodically evolving into a lesser being like love making in reverse. Sympathy has given way to oceans of indifference around our stranded bodies. I cannot help this lady drifting on a stretcher. The white coats sliced her insides and trapped her behind bars of morphine. She can untangle the binds around her but is too entranced in hypochondria dreams to care. Another insolvent night and I catch myself staring at the Titanic. She cries to me for salvation but I can't prevent her from hitting the sea floor by changing the weather. Forever will I cherish what she's done, eternal will I hold her closer than any parent. I'm just too drenched to worry or sympathize.

Suit Of Question Marks

All creativity has drained from my body. It ripped through my pores as if the tissue was caving in on itself. The poor puddle of grief has drenched the mattress where my blood is supposed to soak. Where did the originality go? Was it ever here? I've carved my offspring to the bone and still starve. Skeletons weep, washing my identity away in a murky river. Poetry is dead. I locked her in the shed and fed her nothing but scraps from dumpster dinners. Rigor mortis dances ballet in the garden where my ideas bloom. They're wilted roses mourning atop foam coffins