Ice Cream Cone

A softserve cone
swirl
half-anger, half-denial
sprinkles of shock
and after it goes down
smooth and creamy
lactose-intolerance
acid-reflux

the hearth in my chest
cannot be fed with sugar
and the kindling is screaming
as the fire dies down

Paradiso

while i was reading paradise lost
i came across adam and eve
so i imagined you as eve and me
as adam and we were
beautiful like apples

it just so happens
when you think everything is lost
you come across someone to believe
so i imagined you as eve and me
as adam and we were
beautiful like sanguine pomegranates

i could never take for granted
the comfort of being lost in your sleeve
with a cross of arms around my back like eve
so i imagined you and me
could have our own garden
beautiful like apples

Something

Something splendid in this night
butterfly nostalgia and pretending
we aren’t still teenagers

I haven’t worked these fingers
in too long, not like this
not wrenching them inside my chest

How is it that my words
continue to come out of your mouth?
I haven’t heard sweet in savoury

in too long

For Sylvia

petal by petal, we sheave our lies into the wind like falling cherry blossoms
or plane crashes while the insects and the frogs vette our plans for signs of
the inaccuracy and doubt which is the hallmark of our species
the infamy of humanity will eventually also fade
like kites caught in tree branches,
forgotten by the moonlit hawks and dreary beetles

Pain Perdu

I counted my chickens before they hatched and
damn if I didn’t get less than half a chick

foul foolish poultry
moldy poetry

what did I do wrong in this instance?
I can barely forgive my mischievous instincts
this stinks

I can't think of anyone else
my pain piles up like cookbooks on a shelf

Uncontainable Butterflies

Uncontainable butterflies
I shudder when I
feel them pressing, pleading my skin like
a balloon’s helium
a feeling then like
ignited cotton
the exact opposite of rotten

Bilge

How can you be so bold as to define my rights?
While you send children to refined fistfights
my sleepless nights are filled with informercials:

But the only commercial prospect for me as a consumer, see:
Is abrogating the very concept of me as opportunity

Is advocating in every aspect the puny rumors

That we are collapsing under the weight of our own tumors.

That we are redacting the facts that could soon cure us.

That we are backtaxing the lax and the clueless

The rich that spit filth into greed-pumped sewers.

Well, I'm through with it.

Possibilities

just for one day,
if i could leave this awful loaf of meat

i would become a thousand things
the leaves on trees and kids on swings
i would be the flowers the delivery man brings
empowered by the freedom newly found in me
i could be the sunset, i could be the breeze

i could be the palimpsest for all of earthly history

i would become the housewife fucking lividly
the woody panel for an artist painting vividly
the brushes and the solvents and the pigments could be me
i could be the air that dries, the easel onto which it leans

i could be the man that cries, his fortunes lost on lotteries
i could be a helpless child, born doomed to deaths disease
the wild underbrush of prairies that few men have seen
the udders of a dairy cow whos milk is turned to cheddar cheese

A conniseur whos palate can distinguish one trillion tastes
and i could be each one, if my soul would just make haste
and leave this awful loaf of meat we call the human race

Mutiny

theres a new fine rising on the horizon
a fee for living in a time of uprising

not that new tax is surprising
but why do police have the right to start fining?

if i held out a gun and said pay up or die
id be tried for extortion, id be demonized

yet we accept laws, the collective lies
that our rights exist for other men to deny

we are but a nation of beggars
pleading for freedom while lady liberty pegs us

im hoarse from the anger, plagued by frustration
of course im no stranger to tv and radio stations

propagandas a gamble but if we read and believe it
this land isnt meant for us, lets get up and leave it

lets give up our arms and wave flags of surrender
return america to its original lender

melt down the badges and level the towers
id rather see prairies than masses of cowards

if that sounds scary, and fills you with terror
remember the power you signed off on in error

white men with muskets and manifest destiny
divested this land through conquest and lechery

Old Chub

The fine line between fun and destruction
a function of why equals ex squared consumption
exponential combustion of liver corpuscles
dilated blood vessels, water drained muscles
my wine vessel, a vassal in my vast empire
my last camp fire, fuel for a funeral pyre

I Yearn for a Life Full of Objects

objects do not object to your whims
objects cannot get up and walk away
like people can

objects yield their secrets with time
and can be reverse engineered
better than any man

obviously objectified,
obsequious objects
secreted away in Tupperware caskets

My own private audience
of gift bags, baskets, and wrapping paper:
a life lived objectively

Time Marches

january, in spanish they call it enero
time to start thinking about this years dinero

february is all about cupids arrow
love between the doves and the sparrows

march reminds me how time marches on
april im blazin weed til its all gone

may i may be choppin the first crop
june is when my lovers birthday drops

july blasts off all the mexican fireworks
august california discovers how wildfires work

september is a month to remember
the beginning of fall, the first hint of winter

october celebrates black cats and a witch
november is when derek has to sew on one more stitch

december makes me sad because another year is gone

even between christmas and new years
time marches on

Depression

Depression,
economic recession,
unanswered questions and
freshman politicians second guessing
the essence of american professions
professional liars in the service of
secret senate sessions seven fourty seven jets

jettin,
this is my depression.

University

why does the university charge a fee
information is free in the library
i repeat, i need no receipt
to manufacture lies and propagate deceit

i burned the bootstraps off my own feet
fall like icarus through clouds of elite
liars, living in ivory spires
conspiring commercial desires

stoking the embers of industry's fires
members of congress are industry hired
im sick and tired of being alive all
for the sake of serving a sire's survival

i cannot strive to fulfill the dreams
implanted in me by a scheme - hypocrisy
left with the belief that democracy
worthless than leaves or a pack of seeds

so plant each one you have carefully
grow them as tall as the police building

Advisors

what upsets me about the whole thing
is there's a reccomendation at each stage
but each stage is the curtains, growing more ragged
shutting out each window
smaller, and smaller,
and as all the advice fades into the future we used to imagine
that last window shuts, forever locking us alone
from all those advisors

Ice Plant

hidden behind
stacks of detritus
Fall cleaning
revealing her

vermillion mane
like a clandestine
Poison-ivy Rapunzel

Glistening green
dances between my fingers
turbid and bursting with wetness

with only a pinch
Her fertility multiplied
thousandfold

Utter Revulsion

life is fact-based fiction
so foster your fast-paced addiction
while you're still on this mission
cause even dead president Nixon
couldn't see death coming
they done fixed the election 100 years running

words are utter revulsion
so please poison your wholesome
kids with pills and deals and broken condoms
so that their life can fall down fast false too
since god resigned as number one boss you
redesigned everything without taking a loss cool
and if the devil ain't in charge and its not the Jew
then evil at large is the new barge us can sail on through

words are utter revulsion
so indulging compulsion
purchase everything in store
until your legs are sore until
you feel like a itsy-bitsy flea-leach whore
and the more and more life is empty and even when you cry
drink Pepsi while your fake money bank account runs dry

live life in a dive bar divining
when death might soon be arriving
and upon its arrival your survival ends
so money spent and without even a single friend
no hope for revival around any bend
bent over in pain you transcend
one last convulsion
in the gutter you utter
words are utter revulsion

Base

there's a room under this guys basement where
parties go on all the time without any awareness
from the world upstairs
women with empty-flour-sac bodies and smoke
gyrate listlessly under 255 color lights
while their faces grow imperceptibly older
there's a room under this guys basement

Come

the effects of sex diminish in the circumspect rhythm of
circadian wrecks and chrysanthemum prison love
i wish in retrospect i never ever would have come