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

Grunge

Is that biocide embedded in your lips? Are your arms constructed and put together with C4? I've been to this place a thousand times before. Deja Vu would be putting it lightly. No money to bribe my way out of this, no gifts to distract the berserkers, Nothing but dedication and it's not enough. You better run before you detonate. I am not good enough for you and we both know this. Don't feel guilty because I'll blame myself in the end regardless. The chain around the moon pulls it so close that I can taste the rock and hear the crows that call it home. They all say “don't follow.” I plan on nothing until this moment happens again. It never gets easier. Just a needle pumping more embalming fluid with each subsequent injection.

I Have Testicles

Pretty lady, lay your head on my lap. I'll tell you a story about a lovely girl and her romance with a .45. The sky flashed with crimson fireworks on their wedding night (her funeral) and she never saw happiness again. I am the steel in her grip and the claymore in your chest. The eternal man resides in violent flashbacks but you can see him right before your eyes right now. Feel honored, slut! Get down on your knees and open those jaws like you imprudently did with your heart. I'll make sure to sew your lips shut later. They only need open on nights I feel alone. Thank you but the prince is in another castle. You'll never find him in your new PTSD world where every man wears my face. Take the rejection and untruths with you to the crematorium. Some day you will burn but my chill will outlast the brightest stars and the hottest suns.

Insomnia

I am not alive, drifting through breathing and blinking motions. Autumn leaves and crisp soil fade to white nothingness leaving only the reaper hand of November. Distant cities are erected then demolished in a million spare thoughts. Armageddon behind closed eyelids. I just want serenity in the chaos, to throw a black sky over the burning world. But I'm reduced to jittering like a junkie waiting for his fix of pain. Sterilize the needle so angels can march through my veins. Let the harps whisk me into a thousand year coma where I can finally exist.

NO METAPHOR

The Boy took a quick gander at his naked room. White walls, beige carpet, and a solitary window accompanied only by a mirror, a wooden chair, and a dangling rope where the light bulb should be. His brown eyes looked over the slightly overweight and scarred body draped in a dirty metal t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans painted dirt brown. Outside The Boy's window the world is alive, something he could never relate to. Sounds of car horns and playing children led him to stand atop the chair. As the rope tightened around his neck he thought about money, women, time, and where all those things went (if he ever had them in the first place.) A chubby leg knocked the chair into the pearl wall with a loud crack. Remnants of two wasted decades poured through his cigarette stained teeth and faded away into nothing. He dangled there for weeks. The Boy finally lived!

Note From My Future Self

I hope by some unexplainable miracle that you get this and read it but I don't have high hopes. When you live in a gutter, the only elevated things are your mind from years of narcotics. I would simply tell you to give up on that stupid writer dream, throw a tarp over your mental scars, get a job, fall in with the plastic parade, conform, and plaster fake smiles on every wall. But I know you're too stubborn for that. So hear goes nothing: First, trust no one who uses the word “brother” as a term of endearment. They'll only use the blood to suffocate you. There will be pairs of beautiful eyes inviting you into forever. Don't follow. It's just where sanctuary and kindness go to die. Family ties may be strong but don't rely on them to hold you together. You may ask “what can?” but I honestly don't know out of artificial means. Don't let other's venom poison you. The only antidotes are apathy or inflated arrogance. Avoid parties. They're only filled with countless people you'll never relate to and the mornings after just paint you to look like a stunted clown. Kill your emotions and drag the corpse down High Street to show them all they'll never win. Oh, and for God's sake, don't listen to any notes claiming to be from the future!